DEATH TRAPS
THE recent fire at Gul Plaza proves that most buildings in
Karachi remain death traps, and that nothing would be done to ensure that such
incidents do not happen in the future. Of course, there are people in the
government whose duty it is to ensure that buildings are constructed with
adequate safety precautions and have at least two emergency exits. There must
be those who are required to visit such buildings periodically and ensure that
fire prevention SOPs are being observed.
And we can be sure that, on paper at least, such officials
have reported that all places they have inspected are safe, just as there are
factory inspectors who never visit factories because they are paid to stay away
and generate all-good reports.
That said, can everything be blamed on the government? What
about the shop-keepers themselves? It has been many years since I last went to
Gul Plaza, and I saw that many shopkeepers had kept their goods in the passages
leading to the exits. This would have made it very difficult for their
customers to quickly get out of the building in an emergency.
As for fire prevention measures, it is simply out of the
question. Purchasing fire extinguishers and recharging them every six months is
both time consuming and cumbersome. And, in any case, why waste one’s money on
frivolous things like fire prevention measures? Right?
Of course, if relevant inspectors had regularly visited the
building and imposed fines on errant shopkeepers, this tragedy could have been
avoided. But, then, such officials have only one thing in mind: how to speedily
recover the money they have paid to get transferred to Karachi, and how to
become millionaires in a couple of years. Absolutely tragic.
Shakir Lakhani
Karachi
https://www.dawn.com/news/1968588/death-traps
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