Towering Desperation Pushes Youth To New Heights

Jobless Electropaths Threaten to Jump Off Mobile Phone Tower

SRINAGAR, JULY 02: To draw the attention of the government towards their plight, jobless graduates in electropathy who are on a relay hunger strike for the past twoand-a-half months today threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a mobile tower, while several strikers were taken into custody when they tried to set themselves ablaze. The strikers spent the day atop the tower and were still there late at night, with a couple of policemen keeping watch at the base.

The strikers demand that electropathy be recognized as a part of Indian Systems of Medicine and employment avenues be made avail-able to them. The government, how-ever, has been persistently refusing to recognize their degrees. The strikers, who have been camping in the press enclave here for the past two-and-a-half months, tried a novel method this morning to grab the attention of the government and to shake it out of its apathy: three of them, Rasheed Ahmad, Sajjad Ahmad, and Mushtaq Ahmad, scaled the mobile phone tower near the Khidmat Press, and drapped in white shrouds and waving the banner of their association, raised slogans against the Government.

As news spread that, the unemployed graduates intended to leap off the tower as a mark of protest, scores of policemen, paramilitary personnel and news crews gathered at the scene. The police established contact with the precariously perched strikers with a view to persuade them to come down, but they refused to do so unless the government gave some assurance about recognizing their qualifications and opening opportunities for their employment.

One of the strikers atop the tower, Arshad Ahmad, told the CNS on mobile phone that they had been forced to take this extreme step because no one had paid heed to their peaceful protests.

Accepting that suicide was expressly forbidden by religion, the graduate said that it was the government that had forced them to take this desperate course.

Earlier, when the strikers were climbing the tower, four of their col-leagues on the ground, Abdul Qayum, Hilal Ahmad, Nisar Ahmad and Abdul Hamid, tried to set themselves on fire.

The police, however, overpowered them just in time, and shifted them to the Kothi Bagh police station.

When contacted about the electropathy graduates' strike and their subsequent suicide bid, the divisional commissioner for Kashmir, Mahboob Iqbal, said that the administration had been activated, and a magistrate had been assigned to keep an eye on the situation in the press enclave.

He said that the strikers have held a meeting with the secretary health, Kulbhushan Jandial, and minister for health, Mangat Ram Sharma, and that he was hopeful of an acceptable solution to the issue soon. (Kashmir Observer, 05 July, 2007)