Amusement park safety

The rate of death and injury resulting from amusement park rides may be less than that resulting from travelling on the road. Nevertheless, the tragic accident at Sozo Water Park in Lahore has raised concerns about the safety of amusement park rides in the country, no less so those around the Islamabad region.

The major amusement play lands in this region include Play land Park and Rawalpindi Public Park (also known as Nawaz Sharif Park), both in Rawalpindi, as well as Chattar Bagh and Salgran Park along the Islamabad-Murree Highway. Amusement rides are also found at the Ayub National Park and Children's World in Commercial Market, Rawalpindi.

While the rides in the newer established play lands look safe enough to go on, some of the older ones, e.g., in Rawalpindi Public Park, are very rusty and do not look well maintained.

Another recreational attraction in the area is the Patriata chair lift-cum-cable car near Murree. While the newer cable car section appear comfortably safe, the safety of the older chair lift ride has often been questioned by patrons.

The fact that several major new amusement parks are coming up in this region has also prompted concern about the safety of such future rides in the wake of the Sozo Water Park accident. Two of these proposed projects are in Islamabad, viz., the recreational theme park at Fatima Jinnah Park and the recreational resort at Rawal Lake.

Two others are in nearby Murree, viz., the theme and recreational park at New Township, about 80 kms from Islamabad, and the Bansra Gali Wildlife Park, about 65 kms from Islamabad.

While the recent accident in Lahore appears to have been caused by a mechanical error arising from the lack of routine maintenance of the ride, or possibly a design flaw too, an earlier accident in Karachi in July at the Aladdin Amusement Park, which resulted in the death of a boy, was caused by the disregard or ignorance of safety rules by both the operator of the ride and the family of the boy.

In both cases, the respective authorities acted quickly to close down the rides not only at the amusement park where the accidents took place but at other parks in the city and province, pending investigation into the accidents, and also ordered necessary safety improvements at all amusement parks.

From the above two accidents, it is obvious that ensuring safety at amusement parks is a cooperative effort involving the management/owners of the park, the public/patrons of the park, and the government.

Since amusement parks are dependent upon repeat attendance to stay in business, it is in the parks' best interest to make their rides as safe as possible. Some theme parks in the developed countries, including Disneyland, have a special executive overseeing safety efforts in the park.

Safety efforts not only involve constant maintenance and repair of the rides but also improving the employees' training, experience and wages to reduce turnover (since it is often the new operators who make mistakes), and ensuring that there are enough trained operators manning each ride.

In addition, safety efforts include ensuring that safety signs and warnings for all rides, including restrictions relating to age, height, weight and health, as well as other safety precautions relating to each particular ride, are clear and prominently posted. Enforcement of these safety rules and regulations in the park could be ensured by the presence of safety/security officials roaming the grounds.

The amusement park industry also needs to constantly research and improve existing ride restraints like lap bars, seat belts and over-the-shoulder restraints, which should fit properly and comfortably and yet be effective in restraining people from falling.

The existing lap bars on the Patriata chair lifts for instance do not adequately restrain people, as a result of which there have been several accidents and countless other near accidents.

At the same time, patrons of the park, especially parents, should be made fully aware of safety. Accidents often happen to ignorant patrons and those who wilfully ignore safety rules by not remaining seated and not keeping their arms and legs inside vehicles or jumping onto a moving vehicle.

Not only should patrons be told to carefully read the safety rules posted for each ride, they should check their restraints and be aware of their own actions on the ride. The more patrons are aware of safety, the more accidents can be prevented.

The Sozo Water Park accident has highlighted the government's role (or lack of it) in regulating theme and amusement parks. The tragedy has specifically underlined the need for an amusement rides safety law that enables and obliges the government to provide safety expertise and regulatory enforcement over the operation of the rides.

Under this law, all amusement rides should have a certificate of inspection before being allowed to operate. Rides and attractions in an amusement park, whether mechanical, non- mechanical, electrical or hydraulic, must be inspected by qualified safety officials or inspectors and certified, annually if not six-monthly.

The rules for temporarily installed rides at fairs and melas should be different. The certificates for such rides should be valid for not more than, say, 30 days. Each time a ride is moved to a new location, it should be inspected and a new certificate issued before operation begins.

The certification requirements should also include a certificate of insurance that provides liability insurance for injury or death arising from both mechanical and non-mechanical rides.

The certificate of inspection should apply not only to rides in big theme parks and temporary melas but also rides on a smaller scale, e.g., the rides installed adjacent to a restaurant.

A letter-to-the-editor in Dawn in October 2003 related an accident on such a ride, where one of the carriers broke away from the main frame while the ride was in operation and the boy was flung several metres away, narrowly saved from a broken neck or spine.

The owner's response was simply: "Accidents happen." More interestingly, the ride was back in operation the very next day, with one carrier missing! Any amusement rides safety legislation that is promulgated should be one that obliges the government to take such callous and irresponsible proprietors to task.

Given the increasing demand for such recreational avenues and the likelihood of the increase in establishment of such amusement parks in the country with increasingly thrilling and higher G-forces rides, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that these facilities are regulated so that they do not become death traps for the public, like the roads have become.

It was party-time for Pakistan

London was in the grip of cold and Christmas. But party-goers were disappointed. Not because of the cold but because most offices had cancelled their usual official Christmas parties this year after being warned of morning-after litigations.

Concerned civil society bodies have issued a long list of do's and don'ts about everything from mistletoe to misuse of photocopiers, from dancing on desks to rendezvous behind or in filing cabinets and from laying on food to candles and smoking. But the worst part, in the eyes of many, are the objections teetotallers are being encouraged to raise against the use of alcoholic drinks.

However, the 300 or so party-goers that jostled in the lobby of the Victoria and Albert Museum in the afternoon of December 5 did enjoy one-long, 200-minute 'happy hour' with Bombay Girls (a desi version of Spice Girls) dancing to the bhangra beats of Fareeha Pervez's taped songs. Rajab Ali and Irene Perveen performed live.

The occasion was the launching ceremony of the second of Samina Qureshi's Legendary series. And the chief guest was President General Pervez Musharraf who had arrived just hours before to start his three-day official visit to UK.

It was a mixed gathering of desis and locals. Most wanted to catch a glimpse of the chief guest, but the seating arrangements were such that only the performers could see him and his entourage which included Mrs Sehba Musharraf, the foreign, commerce and information ministers and the high commissioner.

By the time the president was invited to speak, most guests had left because bad acoustics had turned the sound of music into one continuous screech. Luckily or by design, the British-born youngsters of Hizbul Tehreer (HT, banned in Pakistan but not in the UK) who dogged the president throughout his UK tour demanding restoration of the Khilafat in Muslim countries were missing from this function.

If they had been there, they would have learnt a thing or two about the commoners' concept of 'enlightened moderation'. The president was seemingly enjoying the protest rallies staged by the Khilafat-revival brigade throughout his tour of the UK. But the HT youngsters were not offering Gen Musharraf the Khilafat cap. They were accusing him of betraying the cause of the Muslims and therefore demanding that he abdicate.

But then this too suited him because among the demonstrators people in the power capitals of the world did not see a single face that belonged to the so-called moderate mainstream political parties of Pakistan, like the PPP and the PML-N, which have been demanding that Gen Musharraf give up his uniform and abide by the Constitution.

So, of all the places, it was in London that one understood the real reasons behind the release of Mr Asif Ali Zardari on bail and the president's telephonic condolences to the Sharifs on their father's death.

Washington and London perhaps did not want these mainstream political parties of Pakistan demonstrating against their favourite Pakistani in their capitals, and appeared to have used their own powerful offices to mediate a truce (temporary) between Musharraf and his political rivals in Pakistan.

The ruling parties in the capitals of the super-duper democracies perhaps did not want to let their own people see the double-speak in their policy of helping a uniformed general who rules over an elected parliament.

So, they perhaps got the PPP and the PML-N to agree to keep off their streets during the visit, for a price which they perhaps made their guest pay before he left their shores.

And as usually happens with such high-profile visits to London by such high-profile Pakistanis in such trying circumstances, President Musharraf's security was seriously breached on the very second day of his arrival.

The story put out by the British media about this breach sounded too good to be true. The file containing the entire security arrangements with the minutest details was found lying on a London street by a truck driver who, seemingly on cue, brought it to a newspaper office and it was published.

Quite a story. The London media known for its nosing around the world has been quiet on this matter. So far nobody has come up with a logical explanation and nobody has been made accountable for allowing the file to get dropped in a newspaper office.

An implied impression being created is that it were the president's own security persons who lost the file or made it available to the newspaper offices.

This is quite unusual because only the other day The Guardian newspaper, after having followed up a kickback story of 1995 concerning exports of Avis tanks to Indonesia and the involvement of the daughter of the deposed Indonesian president General Suharto, was allowed by the courts to examine its case files to obtain the full story with names.

The Guardian is now following up the story further to find out what induced the then officer in-charge of the official export credit organization of the UK to allow generous credit for such a dubious deal.

This case should be studied rather closely by our own highly dreaded and extremely politicized National Accountability Bureau (NAB). One cannot simply rule out the possibility of such kickbacks changing hands in collaboration with the officials of the host country here and the manufacturers who sold British-made weapon systems to Pakistan in the past.

It was indeed stunning enough to learn that President Musharraf's advice was being sought in resolving the Palestine conflict, but to listen to Mr Altaf Hussain of the MQM on the issue of Kashmir after all these years was more than stunning. How times change.

He sits today with those very people campaigning against whom he has come so far - the jagirdars and the generals - and offers his services to save Pakistan, to unify it and then mediate between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris on the issue of Kashmir.

Musharraf and the US

To the American mind, President Pervez Musharraf's is just about the other name for a stable, America-friendly Pakistan. Through the hectic electoral campaign, reservations were voiced about the sustainability of US-Pakistan ties under a generally Pakistan-sceptic Kerry administration. That, happily, is now a thing of the past after Bush's re-election.

Most Americans would seem to know and worry more about 'Been Ladden' Ladin than for Pakistan itself. They speak of Musharraf as the only leader strong and reliable enough to meet the threat posed by 'Been Ladden' and his Al Qaeda network.

It might have been more or less the same as under the first four years of Ayub Khan (1958-1962). The Sino-Indian war of 1962 and America's sudden pro-Indian tilt thereafter relegated Ayub to the second or third slot in America's order of strategic priorities in South Asia.

Until then Ayub Khan had been not only the other name for Pakistan but more or less the sole rationale for the country's very existence. Even Yahya Khan for a brief space was rated personally by president Richard Nixon as America's best friend.

His skilful role in arranging Henry Kissinger's secret mission to Beijing via Rawalpindi (July 1971) earned him the highest praise of the US administration. Through the 10-year long (1979-1989) Soviet-Afghan war, Gen Ziaul Haq was viewed in similar light in America's proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

Designated as a front-line state, Pakistan was used for rapid transit of guns and gold to the Afghan mujahideen. The general American perception of Zia was: "Yes, Zia is a dictator, but he is our dictator."

President Musharraf appears to stay a notch above his predecessors as the leader of a nuclear Pakistan and commander-in-chief of the only army strategically placed to operate effectively in aid of the Afghanistan-based US forces in their war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He is viewed as the linchpin of America's strategic network in the region stretching from central to South Asia.

The fragility of Gen Musharraf's 'authoritarian rule', however, remains the one engaging concern at the top of the mind of most Americans in and out of administration, not to speak of the media.

Gen Musharraf's ability in ensuring the safe custody of Pakistan's nuclear assets does not appear to be so questionable, as the haunting fear of a fundamentalist regime replacing him.

Such a regime, it is said, if it ever materializes, could be at the beck and call and in active support of the radical Islamic fringe within the army itself. "Who succeeds him could only be worse... He is riding many angry tigers in that country.

And some are reaching back to bite him," US Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was reported to have said in an interview to Time magazine.

On the issue of the military uniform and the general's reluctance to shed it before the year is out, opinion in the US is stretched somewhat thin for and against, because the uniform is seen to be his one armour against power-hungry politicians, 'madding' mullahs, above all, his own 'dissident' generals. His is considered to be a perilously nuanced game.

In uniform, he retains his military authority. Once out of uniform, he ceases to be a serving general without establishing his political legitimacy and clout as a civilian president.

The US administration despite its loud talk in support of the restoration and consolidation of a democratic order in Pakistan would rather deal with Gen Pervez than with Mr Musharraf.

The Washington Post in a hard-hitting editorial captioned 'Broken Promises' wrote (Sept 21) on the eve of President Musharraf's arrival in New York for the UNGA session: "Mr Musharraf has 'betrayed' nearly every promise he has made about democracy and social reform in Pakistan...."

Drawing up a veritable charge-sheet against the president, The Post went on to question the wisdom of the Administration's 'partnership' with an 'unstable country' with its own nuclear arsenal.

It went on to suggest that Mr Bush (pre- and post-election) "stores up more trouble for Pakistan's future by 'failing' to insist on the point that 'a long-term alliance between the United States must depend as well on progress toward democracy, civilian rule and cooperation on nuclear proliferation and action against Islamic extremists of all kinds..."

But overall, Pakistan's image abroad appears to be more an extension of Musharraf's as a reliable matching ally of the US and the West without a matching replacement in view.

The vision of Pakistan without Musharraf would be nightmarish to the West much in his same way as it might have been without Ayub through the worst years of the Cold War and through the Soviet-Afghan war without Zia.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.