THE fire that engulfed Faiz Mohammad Daryani Chandio village, approximately thirty kilometres from the town of Mehar in Dadu district, the other day, illustrates once again not only the sheer apathy of local and district administration to the plight of poor people but also how ill equipped the authorities concerned are to deal with any natural or man-made calamity.
The incident that claimed life of nine children whilst causing severe burns to twenty others besides perishing all houses and inflicting financial damage to the farmers left everybody in the country with shock and grief.
The fire raged for about twelve hours during which the residents repeatedly called the local administration for help. The officials, however, did not respond and reportedly refused to send fire tender.
It was only when Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah took notice and instructed the Deputy Commissioner to provide all possible assistance and support that a lone fire tender reached the village the next day.
By that time, the fire had done the damage. In two other similar incidents of fire within the district, over 60 houses were destroyed and dozens of animals perished.
The provincial Chief Minister has very rightly removed the DC Dadu and places the services of DHO and Assistant Commissioner under suspension for not responding to the fire incidents in a timely manner, however, time has come to learn a lesson from this tragedy and take the requisite steps to avert such horrific incidents in future.
Sindh High Court has been informed by the provincial government that it has only 399 ambulances for a population of fifty million, and sixty government ambulances for Karachi, a city of about twenty million.
The numbers of fire tenders will not be different too. We will suggest the Sindh government to strengthen rescue services in all the districts of the province.
Rescue 1122 service in Punjab has being doing remarkable work over the last many years. This style rescue service can also be initiated in Sindh to provide instant assistance and help to people in an emergency situation.
