Me too, a retired brigadier’

We should not get government jobs again once we retired Brigadier ® Bashir Araein.
It is a request to my retired military officers/colleagues that when our institution has trained us so well. A house and a plot have been given on retirement. The pension is the same as that of civil servants, so after playing our part, we should not get a job in any government institution of Pakistan. This gives rise to a sense of loss of rights in civil society in general and in the new generation in particular, and the result is obvious.

We should use our experience to guide the educated new generation of the country or by starting new venues ourselves to help them find ways of employment because all this will increase our honour and respect in the eyes of the nation. This is my experience.

Read my story and think about why we should not get government jobs again once we retired. I got retirement from CMH Malir in February 2012. Before that, I was the Director of Medical Services at Karachi Corps Headquarters. Since I am also a resident of Nawabshah, people in Karachi knew me well.

After retirement, I got the first call from Dow Medical University saying that we need a director for the Ojha campus. You have come for the interview on the selection board. I went to Dow University. In the interview, I was offered a job for 20 grades. I was also told that the land of the Ojha campus is occupied by people, so you have to vacate it with the help of Rangers. I could understand why these people wanted me as a director. I denied that there are more educated and expert professors than I, so it would be a loss of their rights. The first right should be theirs. Brigadier Muhammad Zubair Sheikh was later appointed to the same post, but he resigned after 4 months and went to Jacobabad Medical Institute due to the reaction and people’s protest.

After my refusal, the second call came from the Governor of Sindh in 2012. It was the month of Ramadan and I received a call on my home number at dawn. I met the governor in his office. At that time, the governor’s personal secretary was a doctor who is my childhood classmate. There were talks about setting up the President University Inspection Team. Due to the guidance of my childhood friend, I came out of there saying that there should be an educationist in this post because there too, wrong things were taken from me by taking advantage of my rank.

My army friends were calling me crazy why am I refusing such interesting jobs? And the truth is that my own son was also getting angry with me for refusing to come to the governor of Sindh.

Now my real story begins. Allah guided me and I got rid of the pretence of being a brigadier and assumed the form of an ordinary doctor. After consulting with my wife, I picked some furniture from the house. I took a room in a friend’s company and made my own office and got a license to sell medicine. I persuaded my younger brothers and nephews to leave their jobs and join me. Along with them we went to various pharmaceutical companies and got the rights to distribute their medicines on the basis of my medical profession. Immediately started submitting the tenders of government supply. I went all over Sindh from Karachi to Mithi, Tharparkar and Jacobabad and then to every hospital in the backward areas of Baluchistan. I was highly respected by people and started winning tenders at a very low profit in front of big suppliers due to my professional skills and in just two years my company’s name started to be heard in the market.

I hired talented educated unemployed youth in procurement and supply. Those students of the IT Department of Iqra University who were needy and unable to pay semester fees were hired on computers. Meantime, my business growing up. After selling the house and plot, I shifted to a rented house. I sent both my children for further study in London and expanded the business by investing the remaining funds in the business. With the help of my profession and Allah’s mercy, I got the contract for the hospitals run under the United Nations Mission of the Army and started to hand over the entire hospital to the army.

Seeing my hard work, IBM invited me to Dubai and assigned me the sole vendor of the Watson Health Drug & Disease online information system in Pakistan. I opened drug information centres in major hospitals like Aga Khan in Pakistan and alike and then the company invited me to America for training.

The journey continued. Three companies had to be formed from one company so that the drug database of the American company, hospital furniture electro-medical equipment and medicine supplies can be segregated. I provided more jobs to the youth and after they learn their work, started helping them as per their ability along with guidance to start their own business. When I earned money, I took the Charter of Etihad University from the Sindh Assembly and laid the foundation of Etihad University, but during the days of Corona, the work of the university was stopped and the funds were used to help the people. After eight years, I shifted my office to Gulshan-e-Jamal, outskirts of Karachi, by separating my company’s office from my friend and benefactor Farooq Malik.

After serving people in Corona, I came to the attention of international NGOs and they started giving me supply contracts in Pakistan for charity. Then people pulled me and put me in property work. The soil became gold. Now I earn more than my needs which I share among the needy. The more I share, the more Allah is giving. When I started helping the flood victims, people from all over the world joined me and I was only a facilitator to help destitute people.

Now I live in my own house. There is a big car. Children earn their own livelihood. I still work hard from Fajr to Isha, so my sympathetic friends ask me angrily “why do you work so hard when there are no more needs”. I have only one answer through this office of mine, Allah Ta’ala has arranged the sustenance of many families and my duty is to share only what has to be done and I am doing it. By serving Allah’s creatures, I continue to receive their love and after working hard all day, I sleep peacefully at night, Alhamdulillah.

And the fact is that even more capable and worthy officers than I am retiring from the army. They are also young. Allah must have arranged their sustenance somewhere, just listen to that inner voice or intuition, and start a personal business by trusting Allah. Do consultation or career counselling for children and by refusing to work in government departments again, bury everyone’s grievances forever and become red-faced that we are not the cause of the loss of anyone’s rights and will not be.

The children of the nation still love the army, but the uniformed people have to reform themselves a little.

 

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