Monsoon Season in Pakistan

The term was first used in English in British India (now India, Bangladesh and Pakistan) and neighboring countries to refer to the big seasonal winds blowing from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea in the southwest bringing heavy rainfall to the area. Monsoons may be considered as large-scale sea breezes, due to seasonal heating and the resulting development of a thermal low over a continental landmass. They are caused by the larger amplitude of the seasonal cycle of land temperature compared to that of nearby oceans. In winter, the land cools off quickly, but the ocean retains heat longer. The cold air over the land creates a high pressure area which produces a breeze from land to ocean. Monsoons are similar to sea and land breezes, a term usually referring to the localized, daily cycle of circulation near coastlines, but they are much larger in scale, stronger and seasonal.

 The summer monsoons roar onto the subcontinent from the southwest. The winds carry moisture from the Indian Ocean and bring heavy rains from June to September. The torrential rainstorms often cause violent landslides. Entire villages have been swept away during monsoon rains. Despite the potential for destruction, the summer monsoons are warmly welcomed in Pakistan. Farmers depend on the rains for their land irrigation. Additionally, a great deal of Pakistan’s electricity is generated by water power provided by the monsoon rains. Foreign people come from abroad to visit Pakistan in the month of August during the monsoon season because the atmosphere is quite pleasant during that time. So, there is still a room of improvement present to avail such a blessing opportunity in right way.

Moreover, Floods in Pakistan are mainly caused by the heavy monsoon rains during the summer monsoon period from July to September. Information on heavy rainfall generating meteorological situations assisted in accurately calculating peak discharges of river flows at designated sites in Pakistan. This contributed to saving life, cattle and property by issuing timely forecasts / warnings to Government agencies responsible for Flood Relief evacuation and mitigation for the people living in the flood plains. In this season the common diseases faced by people are as URTI (Upper Respiratory Tract Infection), LRTI (Lower Respiratory Tract Infection), AD (Acute Diarrhea), SCB (Scabies), and UF (Unexplained Fever). While Malaria, Gastro, and jaundice cases are also exist. Hepatitis B & C can be grow in such a living style mean no cleanliness, unhygienic food stuff & poor availability of proper medicines on time.

Immense Water Crisis in Pakistan!

In fact, water sector is repeatedly ignored by successive governments and due to that, Pakistan is also rapidly losing its legitimate water share of Rivers under Indus Basin Treaty. Due to that, severe effects have started to appear in our society like depletion of water level in cities grounds, lack of water in canals and rapid drying of Rivers. All these are consequences of Pakistan Govt. negligence. 

Provision of pure water to all the people by the government is not only a basic need and precondition for a healthy life but it is also a vital human right of all the people which mustn’t be ignored at any cost. The whole structure of human life revolves round it. In Pakistan, the unconstrained and more than needed population detonation has heightened the need to ensure constant access to improved drinking water supply especially in mega cities like Karachi and Lahore where traces of multiple deadly fundamentals including the human feces are reported by laboratory reports. This shows height of criminal neglect exhibited by the civic bodies towards public right of safe drinking water.

Water is accepted in Islamic teachings as an essential source of life; of which, everybody has the right to a fair share. According to a Hadith, it was stated by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) “Muslims have common share in three things: grass, water and fire”. Moreover, the Holy Quran has also warned the human beings against unfair distribution of common goods and Islamic scholars agree that Islam forbids unfair assumptions, exploitation and uneven earnings of common goods like water.

 It is reported in the media many times that the global water shortage of affordable and safe drinking water is conspicuously visible in Pakistan with an estimated 44 percent of the total population is without any access to safe drinking water. This scarcity of clean drinking water can be more visibly seen in rural areas where up to 90 percent of the inhabitants may lack such access. On the other side, only three percent of Pakistan’s sweet water resources are used for household purposes and drinking. As one warning of the high-scale of the drinking problem prevalent in our society and the public ignorance of it, it is anticipated that more than 2.5 lac infant children die of diarrheal diseases every year.

Bottled water, it may be noted, should not be taken as an appropriate replacement to a sufficient service of tap-water as due to the lack of it, ill fated buyers are forced to use bottled water. During the past thirty years, use of bottled water is increasingly moved up the world over, as it has become a global phenomenon. Bottled water sector, despite its excessively high price compared to tap water, is measured as one of the powerful sectors of all the food and beverage trade as its consumption increases by an average of 12% every year. Government has termed the bottled water market, with 33 million liters of consumption per annum in 2009 & still the ratio is growing by a multiplication factor.

Crisis in Pakistani cinema -Film Industry

The Pakistani film industry named as “Lollywood” after Hollywood & Bollywood gain recognition have been in crisis for nearly a decade. Many cinemas had closed down. Their number came down from nearly thousands to hundreds. The remaining too had few films to show as the local film industry was not producing quality films and these too were few in number. The result was that cinema going culture almost vanished. In the last one year about 17 Indian films were released. Though most failed to do any boisterous business but still the cinema industry got lot of support. On the other hand the film industry crisis is likely to deepen as the local investors are showing reluctance to fund any major film. The Indian films dominate at the Pakistani box office. 

No one is interested in saving the Pakistani film industry. They want to make money only even by exhibiting Indian films. The government has opened doors for the Indian film industry but did nothing to save the local film industry. The local film industry is likely to collapse in view of the fact that we do not have resources to match the Indian films budget. The government should first have boosted its own industry before opening doors for Indians.
Although the Pakistani films story lines all are original but Indian plagiarized is beating Pakistani cinemas. Moreover, a movie song which is a focal point of a successful film is being ignored here in Pakistan. Its fact that dance is not allowed in Islam but as people is doing it here too as a profession than there must be dancing schools to groom our expected filmy heroes & heroines.

Government of Pakistan should maintain a rule & regulation list for upcoming talented people of Pakistan in every field so in Film industry too. They should first serve their own country from they too belong. It’s not a good sign for a patriotic nation to do all good stuff for others. All wise fellows will agree to me.

The 60s and 70s better known as “The Golden era of Pakistani cinema” & the heydays when first-class movies were produced at that time “Lollywood” was not only a source of pride but was also a reservoir of pure delight and pleasure for its viewers. It is during this era that the Pakistani film industry was commended for having produced some of the most memorable and recognized films such as Armaan and Teri Yaad.

Names like Waheed Murad, Nadeem and Muhammad Ali managed to change the face of cinema and earn the status of living legends. Even today these names are alive in the hearts of all, so much so that a simple mention of these names is enough to take someone down memory lane and bring a smile to their face. It is Lollywood glorious past that has kept cinema kicking and going and the faith of the people that has enabled it to survive all these years. The masses still believe that cinema has more to offer and that it will soon reach its true potential and deliver quality productions it once boasted.

Dynamic personality of Pakistan: Faryal Gohar

Faryal is at a time doing multiple things like she is a brilliant actress, a television writer & more importantly a self motivated human activist of UNO in Pakistan. As far as her early life is concerned she was an extra ordinary student who was equally sound for curricular and non-curricular happenings. In Pakistan she belongs to Sindh province and Karachi city. During her entire study life she attended the Lahore American School, Kinnaird College, and finally she did political economy degree from McGill University and documentary film production training from southern California, Europe.
Faryal whole family is talented enough as her father was in army, her younger sister, Madiha Gohar, is a splendid artist and an active member of “Ajoka Theater”. Faryal too did work in theater a few years and in 1984 got married to a charming TV personality “Jamal Shah” but the couple got divorced after a few years without mentioning a mature reason to media, viewers or their fans. She has a younger brother name Amir who is an industrial engineer.
As a writer Faryal wrote his first novel named “The Scent of Wet Earth” which was published by Penguin in August, 2002 and ranked 0n 5th position in New York Times International bestseller list. It was based on film-making sensibilities, the consciousness of “other” and knowledge on “animal behavior”. Despite of acting and novel writing Faryal did a lot for Pakistan in other means such as she produce a documentary titled as Pakistan Poverty Assessment. This work contains the laborious research work on 54 districts and concerned the poor people perception of their poverty reasons.
Faryal plans to extend her commitment to environmental preservation and Here her goal is to, “develop a new paradigm for development which respects cultural identities and the natural environment while enhancing the quality of life on this planet.” A loner by nature, Faryal can be extremely gregarious when the occasion arises. Such dynamism makes her an enigma for those who have not met her personally. Faryal is not a high profile scandal seeker. She shuns vacuous social scenes, preferring to spend time with her beloved pet dogs and ‘underdogs.’ An animal rights activist, Faryal cares for an astounding eighteen cats, seven dogs, three goats, and one donkey.
Feryal’s second novel is already being release. The accompanying screenplay is underway, and her film, Tibbi Galli, will be showcased at the Rome International Film Festival. Faryal is at a landmark moment in her life. These achievements and her acceptance by the world community is no small feat given the often virulent xenophobia aimed at Pakistan from abroad, complemented by misrepresentations about this place and its people. Such news may seal the lips of national and international gossip fiends alike. Let us hope that it inspires them to emulate Faryal and adopt more constructive endeavors.

Pakistani perspective on “Talent Management” as best HR practice

Some people say Talent is God's gifted thing for a person. A person is said to be talented if He/She possessed some awesome ability in a particular activity or field. Everyone is talented in one or another way. Nourishing the talent and utilizing it to the best is a challenge. Talent levels will vary from person to person. There is a lack of talents in all areas in Pakistan. Similarly, competition is always there for getting the talents between organizations and that’s why the talent management attains significance.
Every organization needs talented persons in different levels to enhance the efficiency of the company. In this globalized era talented personnel are having demand and are offered good remuneration. For discharging specific tasks talented and work ethic specialists are needed. In every field the case is same. It is not easy to find the right talent needed for the organization and it takes a wholesome effort involving lot of human resource to find the talents and recruit them accordingly.
Talent management is simply a process of recruitment of talents, developing the skills of existing workforce, promoting and retaining the employees, attracting highly talented and rated employees from other companies etc. Talent management is practiced by human resources department of each and every company around the globe. Performance management is directly linked with talent management. In every organization the challenges as well as strategies are entirely different. Hence the focus is mainly on getting and connecting the talent with the organizational set up as well as making sure that the person can cope up with the organizational challenges and deliver it with strength.
Senior human resource executives are dealing with the talent management and it is very important for companies as there is practice of rival companies attracting away the talents. So motivation and retention of talents in an organization is a real challenge for HR officials. With companies becoming global with overseas acquisitions, keeping the upward growth will depend on cost effectiveness, internal execution of strategies precisely with existing workforce as well as integrating new talents.
Talent management as a best practice is actually competency based and some of the competencies are skills, personal traits, experience as well as knowledge. Talent management is for the optimization of the resources in the organization, henceforth achieving good business results. Developing the talent within the organization is cost effective than really recruiting new ones in some cases and it can be termed as one the talent management best practice as well regarding human resource functions.

Importance of work/life balance & Pakistani organizations

Work-life balance is a broad concept including proper prioritizing between "work" (career and ambition) on one hand and "life" (pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development) on the other. Anyone can say it a "lifestyle balancing approach". Many employees believe that it is due to the advance technology & globalization and a critical harm to social life plus an increase in physique related neuroskeletal disorders from a combination of stress and ergonomic stressors. It is clear that problems caused by stress have become a major concern to both employers and employees.

The importance of work/life balance can count through a series of afterward problems if someone missing it and have symptoms of stress. These are manifested both physiologically and psychologically. Persistent stress can result in cardiovascular disease, sexual health problems, a weaker immune system and frequent headaches, stiff muscles, or backache. It can also result in poor coping skills, irritability, jumpiness, insecurity, exhaustion, and difficulty concentrating. Stress may also perpetuate or lead to binge eating, smoking, or dependency on antidepressants.

When work takes priority over family it is Work to Family Interference (WIF). This type of conflict is mostly seen in male employees as they are more committed toward their work responsibilities in relation to the family responsibilities. However, women are not fully exempted with this type of conflict. When family responsibilities become a hindrance to perform the work effectively it becomes Family to Work Interference (FIW). Many factors contribute to intensify family to work interference which mainly includes family responsibilities such as child and elderly care. The conflict between work and family is now become a crisis for the organizations. With the increase in dual family parents, more job demand and long working hours made it almost impossible to create a balance between work and family.

Pakistan is one of the fast growing economies in the world. Economical and social changes in the last three decades has changed the family and work settings. The increasing rate of inflation changed the working setups in the country. The monthly expenditures are also escalating because of higher rate of inflation. This resulted in the emergence of dual family earners. The monthly expenditure in the year 1996 – 2000 was Rs 6757 in the urban areas of Pakistan which increase to Rs 8997 in the year 2001 - 2004, Rs 9121 in 2005-06, Rs 10583 in 2006-08 and escalated to Rs 15000 2009 - 2010. To maintain the standard of living now both husband and wives has to work and the concept of single earner family is unfortunately diminishing.

As the wave of globalization captured the Pakistani markets the job became more demanding and the working hours also increases. The fast pace economical development in the country has demanded more efforts from its employees. Now organizations in Pakistan are paying off good salary packages, compensation and benefits but the nature of the work is more demanding. The work related stress, work pressure, long working hours leads to job dissatisfaction which is one of the main hinder in the factors related to work/family interferences.