Pervez Musharraf

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – Musharraf retires as Pakistan’s army chief - He remains president after fulfilling long-delayed pledge.

An emotional Pervez Musharraf passed a ceremonial baton to his successor Wednesday, fulfilling a long-delayed promise to step down as Pakistan’s military chief.



Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, right, presents the change of command baton to newly appointed army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani on Wednesday during a ceremony in Rawalpindi.

The president handed over command of one of the world’s largest armies to the hand-picked Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and appeared to blink back tears as he bid farewell to the forces he sent into the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

“I’m proud of this army and I was lucky to have commanded the world’s best army,” Musharraf said, a day before he is set to be sworn in as a civilian president. “I will no longer command ... but my heart and my mind will always be with you.”

The move, which ended his more than 40 years in the army, casts him into uncertain waters, with rivals snapping at his heels and the militants he has sworn to fight after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States contesting ever more of his country’s territory along the Afghan border.

Musharraf’s retirement from the military has been a key opposition demand and the move may help defuse a possible boycott of parliamentary elections in January by parties opposed to his rule – MSNBC News 2:45 a.m. ET November 28, 2007.

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70pc pay hike in UAE

ABU DHABI – DUBAI. 21 November, 2007. 70pc pay hike decision hailed. Federal government employees, both nationals and expatriates, have hailed the directives of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to raise their salaries by 70 per cent.

While several officials expressed their gratitude to the UAE Rulers, many said the decision of the Cabinet to increase the salaries of the government employees was a message from the leadership that the state is concerned about their needs and feelings.

An equally large number of staff at the various ministries said that as their tribute to this decision, they had pledged to work harder to further boost the country’s progress and development.

The pay hike of 70 per cent of basic salaries will come into effect from January 2008. Shaikh Mohammed’s decision, ordering a pay hike for federal government employees, including civilians and security personnel of the Interior Ministry, is in line with the directives of The President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Minister of Justice Mohammed bin Nakhira Al Dhahiri praised the decision of the Cabinet to increase the salaries of federal government employees. “This increase will be an incentive to all workers, whether citizens or expatriates, to make greater efforts to implement the new strategy of the federal government which is aimed at boosting the growth and development already being witnessed by the UAE.”

“This resolution confirms that His Highness Shaikh Khalifa, and all government officials are fully aware of the needs of the members of the society.”

Dr Abdul Rahim Al Awadi, assistant under-secretary for Planning and International Cooperation at the Ministry of Justice, stressed that the decision of the Cabinet to increase the salaries of governmental employees was a message from the leadership to everyone that the state is concerned about their needs and feelings.

Khalifa bin Huwaiden, Member of the Federal National Council (FNC), called it a generous gesture that has come at the right time. “The UAE is witnessing a very rapid construction, economic and commercial growth which has had various effects, including high inflation. By granting this raise, our wise leadership has taken into consideration the inflation, which has been on the rise in the country.

Humeid bin Demas, assistant under-secretary at the Ministry of Labour (MoL), said, “By granting the same pay hike to all staff in the federal government, our leaders have showed that they do not discriminate between nationals and expatriates.”

Najla Al Awadhi, Member of the FNC, said that Shaikh Mohammed’s gesture had filled her heart with joy. “In the Council yesterday, we were discussing with the Minister of Economy Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi how to protect consumers’ rights, the high cost of living, and inflation. Through this pay hike, we clearly see that the UAE leadership is closely concerned with the daily problems faced by the citizens and residents alike.”

Mohammed Juma bin Hindi, acting under-secretary at the Ministry of Education, hailed the gesture saying: “I was expecting the pay rise because I know that our political leaders are keen for psychological and social stability of both the UAE nationals and expatriates. The previous pay rise of 20-25 per cent did not offset the high inflation.”

He also underlined that the pay hike would have a positive impact on school employees.

Minister of Health Humaid Al Qutami said, “The kind gesture, which superseded the previous pay hikes over the past years, was a big incentive and token of appreciation for the efforts of employees in all ministries and federal government departments.” - By staff reporters @ Khaleej Times, U.A.E.

Librahitech writes - The workers, whether citizens or expatriates who work in the private sector as well play an equally good and important role in the country’s progress and development. Therefore, the Government of the U.A.E. shall not ignore the private sector employees when it comes to salary increases. Salary increases ought to be done across the board, in both public and private sectors to avoid income disparities.

At present some companies in the private sector do increase their employees’ salaries by 2 to 4%, which can be thrown out of the window, as it serves no purpose under the prevailing inflationary conditions in the country.

The private sector employees must have a minimum salary increase of 30% to their basic salaries to ensure the resources are equitably distributed among the residents of this country. Needless to say, it would also encourage the U.A.E. nationals to take up jobs in the Private Sector, which they currently loath.



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Colonial cousins

WHEN steel baron LN Mittal was still jostling for the takeover of French company Arcelor, India was convinced that racism and xenophobia stood between him and history. And when he finally won the bid, we were swept away by a wave of economic patriotism. We chose to see Mittal’s ascent as another medal for India in the global race — one more compel ling example of why the world could no longer ignore us.

But now Aditya Mittal — the heir to the giant empire that catapulted his father into becoming ‘the world’s richest Indian’ — has swiftly punctured India’s romantic notions. At a seminar in London that debated the notion of ‘Made-in-India multinationals’ he declared without any compunction or coyness that Arcelor was "not an Indian company".

His father, on the other hand, has charmed countless interviewers (including this columnist) with his soft-spoken and matter-of-fact refusal to surrender his Indian passport. But the son — seen to be a key architect of the Arcelor merger — sees no contradiction between holding an Indian passport and running a “foreign company”.

Like many expatriates of his generation, Mittal junior is clearly comfortable being a world citizen with cultural roots in India. So, Shah Rukh Khan and an entire entourage of Bombay stars may dance at the family wedding in Paris, but when it comes to the crunch, he will say unapologetically, as he did to The Times of India, that he "never saw India as an opportunity".

But where does all of this leave the Indian propensity to foist a confused form of national pride and ownership on anyone with a desi gene in their DNA?

For decades we responded to those who left our shores in search of a better life with an unspoken resentment and, perhaps, even mild condemnation. Subconsciously, those of us who stayed back or returned home after an Ivy League or Oxbridge education believed that we were somehow more ‘Indian’ than the others. We didn’t relate to countries that offered dual citizenship and held on to our Indian passports as a badge of honour and optimism. We were guilty of superciliously ignoring millions of men and women who had made their home elsewhere but were at least partially shaped and formed by India.

Somewhere along the way though, a booming global economy and the startling success stories of expatriate Indians turned us around. We were forced to concede that the émigrés were often the best advertisements for India abroad. And now, as we parade our NRIs at the annual Pravasi Divas festivals and promise them PIO (People of Indian Origin) identity cards, we have swung entirely to the other extreme. We now want to claim everyone as fellow travellers. We want to believe that we are all part of the Great Indian Dream.

But what of those who have embraced new identities and left their national origins buried firmly in the past? In a world increasingly made smaller by the forces of globalisation, the notion of home and identity has become more complicated than ever before. And yet, we are so compulsively self-congratulatory these days that we insist on celebrating every global success as our own if it has even a vague hint of India about it.

When Bobby Jindal became the first ‘Indian American’ Governor of Louisiana earlier this month, for instance, many Indians believed yet again that it had something to do with us. The media devoted an extraordinary amount of space and time to the story of the 36-year-old whose father left a dusty village in northern India three decades ago to chase the American dream. We mythologised his political victory despite knowing that Jindal’s story is much more about American assimilation than it is about Indian assertion.

Whether it was hastily abandoning his Indian name (Piyush) in favour of a more anglicised one or converting to Catholicism to create an easier fit for himself among Conservative voters, Jindal’s identity has been deliberately manufactured. His first words after winning — “I am one of you, a normal, red-blooded, football-loving Louisiana guy” — tell us everything we need to know about how little he or his landmark achievements have to do with India.

We obsessed in a similar way about Sunita Williams’ space odyssey. Just because she ate samosas while staring out at the stars, we decided to convert even that into a vindication of India. Williams was born to an Indian father and a Slovenian mother in Ohio. Unlike her close friend Kalpana Chawla, who went to school in India, she was shaped and formed entirely by America.

Her Gujarati relatives may have got their 15 seconds of television fame when Williams went up into space. But if our militaries are a measure of national pride it may be useful to remember that Williams served as an aviator for the US navy during the Gulf War. And yet, whether she likes it or not, we are deluded enough to hold her up as one of our own and we’ve decided that her journey into space was partially an ‘Indian’ achievement.

Even Trinidad-born author VS Naipaul overawes us and inspires in us a false and misplaced sense of ownership. We meekly accept the flagellation when he calls us "a wounded civilisation” and feel grateful and proud when he changes his mind and concedes a grudging admiration.

And yet, each time he comes visiting India, we fall over ourselves to meet with him and measure our self-worth through his scathing eyes. One such round of India-bashing finally compelled the current Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Navtej Sarna, to lash out in his other avatar as a writer. In an open letter published in the Hindu Literary Review, Sarna asked, “If this country is so hopeless, its literature so bankrupt, its literary soul so vacuous, then why not just let us be? You see, we are like this only."

The tragedy is that all too often we forget who we are and begin looking outwards (especially to the West) for approval. Every time India insists on being a forced stakeholder in a global event, it makes you wonder if this is really a celebration of nationhood or some lingering colonial complex – by BARKHA DUTT - November 15 2007 – Khaleej Times.



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Health Insurance for Expats

ABU DHABI - 6 November 2007 – Health Insurance for expats in Dubai, Northern Emirates soon.

Expatriates residing in Dubai and the Northern Emirates will be covered by a health insurance system from next year, under a federal insurance law.

"We are hopeful that by 2008, a federal law on health insurance will be enacted to provide expat residents with health services in return for a health insurance premium," said Minister of Health Humaid Mohammed Obaid Al Qutami. In Abu Dhabi, more than half a million expatriates are covered by a mandatory health insurance since July 2006.

Speaking to Khaleej Times yesterday, the minister disclosed that the draft law was currently with the Legislations Committee, which will soon send it to the Cabinet for approval.

"The draft law has been finalised and submitted to the Legislations Committee. It awaits approval of higher authorities," said Qutami. The Ministry of Health (MoH) had earlier suggested implementation of an insurance law with the aim of providing expatriates with medicare services at affordable prices. Qutami said: "The policy will contribute to improvement in medical services available in the country.”

The insurance scheme might also help in providing expats with medicines at reasonable prices "depending on the kind of insurance policy," the minister said. - By Nada S.Mussallam – Khaleej Times – Dubai.

We are eagerly awaiting the implementation of this insurance scheme - Librahitech.

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Political dynasties dangerous - Opinions

Political dynasties dangerous - Opinions

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Learn your business buzzwords - Opinions