The death toll has surpassed the figure of 850 during the last five days in Karachi alone due to stifling weather conditions, exacerbated by load shedding. A total of 38 deaths have been reported from interior Sindh, but this may be an underestimation as many deaths in remote rural areas go unreported. All of Sindh is in the grip of a persistent heatwave and the mortuaries are flooded with dead bodies, which are still coming in. And yet no tangible action on the part of the provincial and federal governments is visible. The top brass is doing nothing except passing the buck to save their skin. The provincial government argues that it is the responsibility of the Centre to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the port city. So far the provincial bigwigs have satisfied themselves with staging a dharna (sit-in) and making furious speeches against the PML-N government, oblivious of the fact that they are protesting against themselves. The federal government has absolved itself of blame and held K-electric responsible for the power failures. This is totally absurd as both are acting callously. Where is the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) that was set up to deal with this sort of emergency? Why did it fail to act on its own when severe weather hit Karachi?
Amid harsh weather conditions and widespread outages, one source of relief for the citizens of Karachi is the 22 health centres set up by the army that are providing them with cooling items to fight the sizzling heat. The efforts by the army, Edhi Centre and some other welfare organisations stand out in sharp contrast to the provincial and federal governments. K-Electric says that it cannot provide electricity to those areas where line losses are high and the cost of electricity is not paid by consumers. Speaking about bill collection, Federal Minister for Water and Power Khwaja Asif gave figures of different cities from July 2014 to April 2015. According to these figures, Multan and Faisalabad Electric Supplies Companies’ bill collection was 100 percent while Karachi Electric Supply Company showed a figure of 33 percent, which was the lowest compared to all other companies. Though Sindh lags behind in bill collection, yet those consumers who pay their electricity bills regularly, are victimised by load shedding for no fault of theirs, because of their defaulting neighbours. It is the government’s responsibility to evolve a mechanism for the elimination of line losses and it should not resort to punishing those citizens who are cooperative.
The present catastrophe is the result of complete failure of the provincial and federal governments as well as all concerned institutions like the NDMA who acted as silent spectators when the common citizens were dying due to their negligence. The figure of 850 deaths is horrible and should be enough to awaken the sleeping conscience of those sitting in the power corridors. Wake up, Mr Prime Minister (PM) and play your role to save the countrymen from this crisis.
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