Augean stable

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot!

The main task of cleaning the Augean stable from corruption, nepotism, cheating and straight-forward theft remains a grey area.

"For how can we cleanse this Augean stable of criminal derelicts if we only sit in the sidelines and remain remiss in our solemn duty to serve and protect our people," Deluvio said.

'Cleanse the Augean stable' means to rid a place or entity of an accumulation of something distasteful.

It is pertinent to mention here that soon after her posting as DC Hafizabad, Saliha Saeed (at present DC Lahore) launched a vigorous campaign to remove encroachments on busiest roads and taken several steps to give New Look to the city by removing Augean Stable.

It now requires an iron will to clear the Augean Stable. Moreover, the task of addressing the water crisis inQuettaand Gwadar was assigned to the Public Health and Engineering (PHE) Department.

Pakistan has become an Augean stable that desperately needs to be cleaned up.

In a reference to the mythical tasks of Hercules, she said: "When we look at some of the house-clearing that is going to happen, are we going to say we don't need some pretty big shovels for the Augean stable?" Asked yesterday what should be done in the wake of numerous allegations of abuse and harassment by MPs, she said: "These overwhelmingly maledominated professions - where the boys' locker room culture has prevailed and it's all been a bit of a laugh - has got to stop."

It is worth mentioning that all the new DCOs after resuming the charges had issued such instructions to the head of departments and boasted to clear Augean Stable which has never been cleared.

Landersin the Augean Stable said:"Palestinians are tempered partly by their desire to enlist support from the very Arabs who victimised them, partly by their fear of reprisal, partly by their honour-bound need to believe that the Israelis are their greatest enemies."

Certainly the Augean stable of Hassan's Morocco could do with a good cleansing.

Despite some criticism, the consensus appears to be that the government made the right decision in bringing back the former EFCC boss to cleanse the Nigerian-oil Augean stable. If Ribadu and his team succeed even halfway, the entire business ethos of the country could change for the better and this giant of Africa will begin to realise its true potential.