This refers to ex-Information Minister Ch. Fawad Hussain’s remarks were uttered at the Pakistan Film Festival held in the Pakistani Pavilion at Dubai Expo a few months ago.

Mr Fawad Ch. extended gratitude to the UAE-based overseas Pakistanis for their major contribution to the US$ 31 billion annual remittances derived by Pakistan.

He went on to state that “Overseas Pakistanis are the precious asset of the country; PM Imran Khan stands with Pakistani expatriates in the same way as they do with him”. A fair enough observation!

If the overseas Pakistanis are a precious asset, how long will they continue to finance, bankroll, and prop up our struggling economy? How long will they continue spoon-feeding the resident Pakistanis, whose performance as conscientious and capable citizens is almost always off the mark, marked by incompetency, insincerity, or inadequacy?

Therefore, the citizens of Pakistan must rise up and join hands with their overseas brethren in efforts to reform, reformulate, and revitalize Pakistan so that step by step it succeeds in attaining its rightful abode in the “association of developed, respected, and successful nation-states”; this, precisely, is the crying need of the hour.

ABBAS R. SIDDIQI,

Lahore.