Abdul Sattar Edhi….. a legend… a true Pakistani….a phenomenon and an institution who devoted his whole life for his country men.
“People will walk in and walk out of your life, but the one whose footstep made a long lasting impression is the one you should never allow to walk out.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson
Sometimes a fortunate combination of the national situation and personal characteristics produce an individual with a capacity to understand the challenge and develop responses to this challenge. Edhi is one of them, who struggled for poor and helpless people of his country and founded EDHI FOUNDATION. Edhi Sahab was a prrof that a determined individual can mobilize others to alleviate misery and knit together the social fabric of a nation. He single handedly created one of the largest and most successful welfare network in Asia. He never took any financial support from government or any other organizations.
Starting in 1951 with a tiny dispensary in Karachi’s poor Mithadar neighborhood, Edhi has steadily built up a nationwide organization of ambulances, clinics, maternity homes, mental asylums, homes for the physically handicapped, blood banks, orphanages, adoption centers, mortuaries, shelters for runaway children and battered women, schools, nursing courses, soup kitchens and a 25-bed cancer hospital. All are run by some 7000 volunteers and a small paid staff of teachers, doctors and nurses. Edhi has also personally delivered medicines, food and clothing to refugees in Bosnia, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. He and the drivers of his ambulances have saved lives in floods, train wrecks, civil conflicts and traffic accidents.
Ehi Sahab was a simple man who handled millions of rupees transactions on daily basis with out any greed and lust and even a thought to mis-use it. Edhi sahab was running his organization with a simple rule:
“when there is a positive will there is way out”
He did not need a fleet of ministers, consultants, advisors and above all foreign aid to run his institution. Reason was very simple, he knew what he is doing and we blindly trust him. This is the trust and fame none of the personalities enjoyed apart from Quaid e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in this region. Compare his life style with that of our leaders, ministers, buruecretes, businessmen, feudal Lords, and rest of the big shots and you will find out the very basis of our system is wrong. We provide luxuries of life at the expense of tax payer’s money who does not even need luxuries, but are still hungry and greedy for it.
He always said:
“I tell people that, because I am working for you, the money must come from you.”
He stated once about his habit of saving money.
Every day before school, my mother would give me two paisa and say, ‘Spend one paisa on yourself and give the other away,’” Edhi said. “When I came home, she would ask me where I had given away my one paisa. It was her way of creating an awareness in me of the need for social welfare.”
How can we forget this noble man, nobody can replace him. May Allah grant him Jannah. Ameen.
A tribute for EIDHI SAHAB from Ainycooks:
LEGEND -ABDUL SATTAR EDHI by Slidely Slideshow