Sada-e-Watan Sydney ™
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English translation of the Urdu speech delivered by Mr. Zahid Jamil at SAMAA’s Eid Milan Function on Sunday,11th Sept 2011 at the Auburn Town Hall Sydney
Respected Guests,Assalamalaikum (greetings of peace)
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all with very warm Eid greetings. It is a great blessing of our lord that we are celebrating Eid after the holy month of Ramadan. On behalf of SAMAA I also extend condolences to some of our families who have lost their elderly during the past year. I will be paying tribute to them later.
Ladies & gentlemen, South Asian Muslim Association has travelled a great distance since our last Eid celebration here in September last year. We have made rapid progress in achieving several of our objectives during this period. We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with another nursing home in Lakemba viz Wallgrove Aged Care facility. Therefore we now have two nursing homes which are able to provide culturally appropriate care to the elderly of our South Asian Muslim community. Existing already is the Curie nursing home in Oatlands, with which SAMAA has arrangements for such facilities.
We have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CareConnect, a major service provider who will be able to look after our elderly living in their homes. CareConnect is applying for funding from the current Aged Care Approval Rounds. Depending on the success of their funding applications, they will be able to provide various aged care services in a number of regions within Sydney and NSW, with a special focus on South Asian Muslims. Through such arrangements, SAMAA is heading in the right direction.
In association with CareConnect, SAMAA is also holding workshops this year which are a part of the Positive Ageing Grant 2011 of Ageing, Disability and HomeCare NSW. In total 10 workshops are to be held. Five have already been held at Blacktown, Brighton Le Sands, Hornsby, Campbelltown and Liverpool.
It is gratifying to be able to convey that all the workshops have been extremely successful, attended by more people than we had expected. All participants have been greatly appreciative of the information and advice they received at these workshops. In each workshop, the main presentation is from Alzheimer’s Australia. We also engage a community doctor to speak on another aged care related issue. Local Aged care product suppliers and product providers have stalls to exhibit their products and services along with a brief presentation. The next workshop is due to be held at the Rydges Hotel in Wollongong on 30 Sept. Please visit the SAMAA website for full details of upcoming workshops.
An advantage of these workshops has been the rapid rise in registration of elderly and volunteers. During workshop campaigns, we have been able to approach many elderly and volunteers to encourage them to join and benefit from the services of SAMAA.
Those of you who have not yet attended the workshops, I would request you to do so in one of the future workshops. I assure you it will be of great benefit.
Ladies & Gentlemen, a major news on the SAMAA platform is that SAMAA is now officially a public benevolent institution and your donations to SAMAA are now tax deductible. This is a major success and we hope that the South Asian Muslim community will come forward in making donations which will help SAMAA in strengthening its programmes. One of the major item needing donations is the building of a nursing home and a retirement village, which needs huge sums of money. We are now considering ways of raising funds for this project, and request you to make suggestions in this regard.
South Asian Muslims have donated large amounts for the building of mosques, successfully resulting in many mosques belonging to various South Asian Muslim groups such as Pakistani & Indian, Fijian, Bangladeshi and South Africans. It is time now that we recognize the need to build a facility where our elderly can live as per their beliefs and practices, have social interaction with their contemporaries and achieve some mental peace despite the difficulties of old age. Building such a facility is an act of great sawab (reward in life hereafter). People such as myself who are not far from old age, should contribute for our own future needs. Tax deductibility is certainly a major incentive.
So, God willing, SAMAA will continue to progress with your support. We will continue to avail all the opportunities at various levels to provide services to our elderly.
Ladies & Gentlemen, although we are enjoying Eid celebrations today, we extend heartfelt condolences to the few families who are marking Eid without a family member for the first time. The SAMAA family has lost a few of its elderly during the past few months who were present with us during our Eid function last year. Firstly, the senior most South Asian Begum Aliya Khatoon, whom many of us called Ammi with love, passed away on June 12. SAMAA had celebrated her 100th birthday at its annual event on 12 March 2011. We pay tribute to this remarkable person. She served the Sydney community in many ways. She taught Quran to many and graced many Mushairas and ghazal programmes through the 70s, 80s and 90s. We extend our condolences to her daughter Shahnaz Hyder and other family members.
A few days later, another very popular personality Dr Syed Badar Qadri unfortunately passed away. Dr Badar Qadri played key roles in several community associations over the years and was loved by everybody due to his humorous and affectionate nature. He will surely be sorely missed for a long time. We extend our condolences to his family.
A couple of days before the beginning of Ramadan, we lost another elderly Mr Ali Hussein Siddiqui. He had also attended the Eid Milan function last year. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family members, many of whom are present here.
Another SAMAA elderly, Mrs Inayat Abdi, who had also attended the Eid Milan last year, passed away a few months back. We extend condolence to her son and daughter in law, Mrs Saba Abdi, who also lost her mother and aunty around the same time overseas.
We also extend condolences to Mr Ajaz Khan, whose mother passed away during the last week of Ramadan. Let us pray for their souls by reciting the Quranic chapter Fatiha.
Today also happens to be the 10th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on US soil, and we remember the victims of this attack. We also remember all those millions of innocent civilians who died in numerous wars, terrorist attacks, insurgencies and uprisings around the world. Let us pray for global peace. Surely if we human beings follow the basic fundamentals of those ideologies which we claim to believe in, all of us can live in peace irrespective of our religion or ideological beliefs.
So ladies & gentlemen, thank you again for coming here today. The Productivity Commission Report on inquiry into aged care, which included a submission from SAMAA and has been released a few weeks back, has recommended major changes in the Aged care industry. We will keep an eye on these changes and keep informing you about these changes through our newsletters.
SAMAA’s services to South Asian Muslim elderly were acknowledged in the NSW parliament a few months back. The MLC Hon Shaoquett Moslemane gave an adjournment speech in which he showered praises on SAMAA.
I wish to thank Hon Barbara Perry, the Auburn MP and the Shadow Minister of Ageing, for her full fledged support for SAMAA. Similarly, I wish to thank Hon Laurie Ferguson for his support for SAMAA over the last few years. We thank all the parliamentarians who listen to us, offer advice and practical support. We pray to Allah SWT that we are able to correctly handle all stages of our progressive development and that SAMAA continues to serve the community for a long time to come……Aameen. Thank you.
For more information about SAMAA and for donating to a worthy cause, please visit SAMAA website: www.samaa.org.au
