|
|
|
| October 26, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramzan 21, 1426 |
Disaster management plan for Karachi urged
ISLAMABAD, Oct 25: MNA Sherry Rehman said on Monday a national relief department was working under the Cabinet Division but no one had heard of it since the 10/8 earthquake
In her hard hitting speech at the Monday session of the National Assembly last Monday the PPPP MNA referred to Karachi as being most vulnerable to a tsunami but its Disaster Management Plan had been gathering dust for the past 15 months. It should be enforced, she said. Karachi was home to the highest amount of high-rise buildings, katchi abadis, schools and hospitals, but it was the victim of the most notorious building mafias that violate building codes, she observed.
Not a few stir was caused in the House when the MNA asked every body concerned to start preparation right now for another massive earthquake because, as she put it, the entire South Asia was vulnerable to it. The Indian plates were digging into the Himalayas and it was a matter of life and death for Pakistan. She said that the Indian plate was moving at the rate of a millimeter per week (five centimetres per year), and South Asia is due for another massive earthquake.
She informed the House that Pakistan did not have a seismic code nor is it member of the Global Seismographic Network. India has opted out of this regime because of its nuclear assets, but Pakistan might profit from its fault lines mapping because the country may be in the line of future major earthquakes.
Referring to the collapse of public buildings in Azad Kashmir and NWFP she said it clearly showed negligence in planning and violation of building codes.
All hospitals and schools, private and otherwise, now need to be both built with strict safeguards, but also retro-fitted. In Muzaffarabad, the Combined Military/District Hospital was the first to go down, as were all the government schools in both quake hit areas. The Japanese say that it is not expensive to retro-fit buildings.
She blamed the gap between crisis and reaction to it from government agencies about the 10/8 earth quake. In contrast, civilians had accumulated food supplies and made their way up to the affected areas. Why was the government response so slow? She also quoted international aid agencies who have been saying that more than 20 per cent of the areas affected still have not been reached. “The first day focused too much on the Margalla Towers fiasco in Islamabad. The death toll for that day was estimated at 100 people.—Jonaid Iqbal
|
|
|
|
