KARACHI, Sept 6: Despite repeated warnings by the Sindh home minister against the use of firecrackers, the menace goes on unchecked, especially during wedding ceremonies; and those selling and using them are also going unpunished.
The rampant use of firecrackers amid aerial firing has not only become a source of nuisance but it often creates scare among residents especially children. Although the deafening sound created by firecrackers often compels students and office-goers to spend restless nights, police mobiles and the police station concerned usually play the roles of silent spectators despite warnings by the home ministry. The worst sufferers, however, are newborn babies and cardiac patients.
According to doctors, the deafening noise of firecrackers could cause irreparable damage to the hearing faculty of infants and might even prove fatal for cardiac patients.
“When the noise pollution has already assumed an alarming proportion in the city in the wake of frequent use of pressure horns by drivers of buses, minibuses, coaches, trucks and other heavy vehicles, the indiscriminate use of firecrackers would play havoc with the nerves of citizens,” a senior doctor remarked.
The menace of firecrackers is not only confined to marriage lawns and wedding places, it has also spread to residential areas.
Those accompanying the bride and bridegroom’s motorcade resort to aerial firing, creating panic in the nearby vicinity and heavily using firecrackers.
Firing starts again upon reaching the residence of the bridegroom whether located in an apartment building or in a katchi abadi.
Since marriages are usually solemnised around midnight, the noise caused due to the indiscriminate use of firecrackers, along with kalashnikov bursts, echoes in the entire apartment building or in a housing complex. Besides the nuisance, this also exposes residents of such places to bullet or cracker injuries and/or fatalities.
The complaints of using firecrackers continues to pour into newspaper offices from almost all parts of the city; however, this reporter himself saw that when firecrackers were continuously being exploded by friends and relatives of a bridegroom at around 3am in the compounds of Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Al-Azam Apartments building, a police mobile van in the meantime remain parked just in front of the main gate of the building.
Concerned citizens deplored that though an oil company of Korangi area had suffered colossal losses in the wake of a fire that was ignited when a splinter from some firecrackers, used at a wedding ceremony in a nearby katchi abadi, fell on oil-filled drums, the authorities concerned seem to have learnt no lesson.
Apprehending that the menace of using firecrackers would reach its peak during the Shabb-i-Baraat, they demanded the home minister and the CCPO to put a complete ban on the manufacture, sale and use of firecrackers.
They also urged authorities to take strict action against police officials, who fail to bring the menace to a halt.
