Words could never be enough to
summarize the incident of such magnitude. An ever-worst national tragedy may it
be called in which the ruthless fire caged, tortured and brutally killed a
large number of working class of the metropolitan city. In a building entirely
packed, where exit gates were locked, fire extinguishers were missing - for al
least one and half hour as claimed by owner of Ali Enterprises, Arshad Bhaila -
and had no way for the air to pass, how anyone could have found a way out of
the burning hell. The result was a wait for the absolution of the destiny, the
destiny which unfortunately had some other plans. Thus the deleterious wait
ended up in mourns and anguish for dozens of unfortunate families.
But the question lingers around is
that, is it the only ill-fated building in Karachi which does have loops holes? We all
know that there are hoards of buildings standing in the metropolis or candidly
speaking in all parts of the country, which are not even close to the international
standards of construction. These are the time bombs ticking on our heads
persistently, but in the end the point is, who cares? Sad enough it
takes an episode of this spectrum to be happened to turn few heads.
And as soon as the calamity occurs, the
blame game begins with concerned bodies putting the ball in each others court.
Government announces three lacs for each head and blames the factory owners for
the massacre, the ones who always have their suitcases ready to leave for the
airport, surely before the ECL is being sent to all the exit stations. Never
too late for the building control authorities as well. Those who give thumbs-up
to the constructions of additional floors and allow usage of sub-standard
material for constructing buildings which couldn’t even guarantee a year to
stand, then why they would even think of implementing house-building laws in
the city. Thus, except few burned souls who were trapped in the building,
everyone else would very conveniently find an escape gate for himself.
During this saga, another revelation
comes to surface. It was, that in 2003 (The Musharraf era), electrical
inspectors were halted from inspecting electrical installation work of
building, before issuing licence to the applicant. But the issues arise here is
that why nothing has been done about it in so many years? What the labour
inspectors’ job is? Why the environmental protection industry doesn’t make a
concrete step to ensure that law for fire prevention are followed by all? Why
the fire exits of such huge structures are being permanently sealed? And why
local bodies like SITE ltd (Sindh Industrial Trading Estates) and civil defence
authorities couldn’t play any role in preventing such disastrous incidents to
be happened? So on and so forth. Hence, again we are left clueless who to put
the blame on.
As per revolutionary-customary
practice of suo-moto actions had been taken by the courts, investigation
committees have been formed by the government; inquiries, hearing, notices,
arrests, and bails, the tango would go on for sometime. Eventually, the file
would be thrown into the piles of other brittle paperwork stored in any of
the government’s data preservation centre. Alas! The crying faces of the ones who
lost lives of their bread earners, could do nothing more than plunging TRPs of
the news channels.
Is there any hope? That’s what we usually ask and see each others face to find the answer but the only silver lining is the one that lies inside us. We should change our own nature to bring up the change; the stubbornness inside us that evoke us to break rules and put other’s life on stake. That could begin by accepting our mistakes, our failures, and our wrong doings. It’s not cruel to commit a mistake; cruelty is to be obstinate about it. Lives of those who were left helpless in that factory couldn’t be restored. But we can make an effort to save the ones that are left.
Rules are made to be followed - but
are seemed - meant to be broken in our dear homeland. Blaming the government is
always a convenient option, but if we ask ourselves that do we make cautious
efforts in our daily routine life to ensure safety of others, the answer would
mostly be “No”. Living responsibly is the only way of living. Life is
important; we should begin to give respect to it otherwise from where and when
this fire would catch us no body knows!
