Daily Times

Thank you Muhammad Ali Sadpara for putting Pakistan’s mountaineering in limelight at the cost of your life and two other international mountaineers. Once again, it is realized that Pakistan needs to have mountaineering recognized, owned and supported through state patronage. The mountaineering in Pakistan seems to be like an orphan child for the last seven decades. We have seen the doors of the President and Prime Minister houses opened only when any mountaineer has summited any peak and the international media has picked up the story. Otherwise, this adventure sport has no place on the priority list.

After Muhammad Ali Sadpara has lost himself at the bottleneck of K-2 on February 5 this year, the need of a mountaineering school and a trained rescue team is under discussion yet again. I believe the media and the mountaineers will be silent soon. They will wake up again when the similar incident happens again. A strange nation we are.

It is time to seriously think about implementing the suggestions and recommendations coming up from the mountaineers and other experts. Speaking at a webinar on “mountaineering challenges confronting Pakistan”, the experts urged the government to urgently establish a professional mountaineering school and a strong Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) having right professionals on board. The webinar was organized by the Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) last weekend.

It is fairly true that the national mountaineering federation is occupied by the part-time office bearers who have no vision and knowledge of mountaineering. They had never been to any peaks nor have been regular mountaineers. I don’t know how they could manage their basic membership of the Alpine Club of Pakistan. Government shall dissolve the ACP to reform it or the Supreme Court of Pakistan shall take notice to make it a more professional body – an organization having professional mountaineers on board, not the tour operators and the government officers benefiting themselves or their children.

Mountaineering should be a national phenomenon like cricket. But unfortunately we lack state patronage and recognition and so is the case of corporate sponsorships

Over the time, the Alpine Club of Pakistan has turned to a weaker body having unprofessional members on board and the office bearers who lacked organizational skills, competency and transparency right from its elections to its performance. The Alpine Club of Pakistan despite having a heavy mandate and scope of work as a national federation but could not perform according to the needs and its scope of work.

I usually term the ACP as the Children’s Alpine Club of Pakistan because it only organizes under-publicized events for the children while the international visits are never made public. Any accountability department or court shall conduct an investigation on the process and beneficiaries of the local and international events.

The Alpine Club of Pakistan could never establish a rescue team or trainings for the high altitude climbing and mountaineering. It could never organize any national or international convention to consolidate the local skilled human resources into a larger team. It could never plan a high altitude mountaineering event and independently raise funding for it. The ACP needs independent and thorough professionals on board to make it a vibrant organization to promote and mainstream mountaineering in Pakistan and attract foreign mountaineers and trekkers.

We shall appreciate the Pakistan army for conducting the rescue operations quite efficiently when needed. This team may be engaged from the day one of any mountaineering expedition so that the Pakistan Army rescue team could be engaged right after any mishap without wasting time. Getting a mountaineering permit takes too long despite the Prime Minister’s instruction to reduce the processing time. It takes too much time to get a visa for the foreign tourists though the federal government has announced a lenient visa policy. Government and state departments shall check the bottlenecks and facilitate the mountaineering and trekking expeditions.

Our well-known mountaineer Nazir Sabir believes that all stakeholders need to sit together to develop an integrated policy for mountaineering and trekking. Mountaineering should be a national phenomenon like cricket. But unfortunately we lack state patronage and recognition and so is the case of corporate sponsorships. In fact, the Alpine Club Pakistan has no capacity to handle the national framework of mountaineering. ACP needs to be reformed.

According to Col (Retd) Abdul Jabbar Bhatti mountaineering is an adventure sport that is based on your own resources, skills and risk. Mountaineers and High Altitude Porters (HAPs) have no insurance schemes in Pakistan, no proper training and no sponsorships. Corporate sector will not come up to support this sport until it is not adequately mainstreamed. We have no structured system for mountaineering and trekking. We need to put ‘right persons on the right jobs’ if interested to do the needful, and it will not happen sooner even if we start today.

For the vibrant future of mountaineering in Pakistan, we need to have the right professionals and a vigorous framework is very essential for mainstreaming of mountaineering. Government and the state institutions need to have some liberal and lenient policies to attract foreign mountaineers and trekkers. We shall also have an adequate monitoring and checking system to reduce high altitude pollution.

We shall also take note of the Secretary ACP Karrar Haideri’s statement that the Alpine Club received a lot of criticism but not funding at least for the last three years even though we are trying to survive. All officer bearers perform their duties without any remunerations. We have taken up issues with the government several times but are still waiting for the patronage and support. The Pakistan army has had a meeting of stakeholders recently to develop an outline of the framework to promote mountaineering in Pakistan. The National Tourism Coordination Board (NTCB) is also focusing on it.

The writer is a freelance journalist and broadcaster, Director Devcom-Pakistan, a policy advocacy and outreach think tank in Islamabad. His email: devcom. pakistan@gmail.com Twitter Handle: @EmmayeSyed