PM nominates Edhi for Nobel Peace Prize

Pakistan

PM nominates Edhi for Nobel Peace Prize

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PM Gilani on Monday nominated Abdul Sattar Edhi for Nobel Peace Prize.

28 November,2011 10:04 pm

During a meeting with the United Nations Special Envoy, Nafisa Sadiq in Islamabad, Gilani made this official announcement.Edhi is head of the Edhi Foundation, the world’s largest ambulance help service and charity. The Edhi Foundation provides free shelter to old people, orphans, abused women, even injured animals.Its services also include rehabilitation of drug addicts and mentally challenged people.The foundation operates hospitals, mobile dispensaries, free kitchens, helicopters, airplanes and hundreds of ‘little white’ ambulances.Ambulance dispatchers field 6,000 calls a day from Karachi alone, boasting a 10-minute response time.The foundation has also done relief work in other parts of the world like Africa and the Middle East.Edhi owns a single set of clothing and often sleeps in a storage room – even though millions of dollars pass through his hands annually.At 83, creature comforts don’t matter much to Abdul Sattar Edhi. He is far too busy caring for the sick, feeding the hungry and burying the dead.Edhi is a humanitarian light in a violent and troubled land. With the vast majority struggling in a daily moribund economy, natural disasters, poverty, political instability, corruption, militant attacks, and political enforcers are facts of life.“In this environment, a shrinking violet won’t make much headway,” he says.“You’ve got to be tough, gruff and confident,” Edhi refers to himself as beggar, and wears his worn black tunic as a badge of honor. His charity does not discriminate based on religion, race or gender. For him, religion is human rights. As for the rich, even as he welcomes their donations, he chides them for their priorities and their motives.