KARACHI, April 18: As Nida Bhatti picked up her chirpy six-year-old son, Shazim Khurram, at 1.30pm from his school in DHA Phase 8, she had not the slightest idea that a serious accident was in store for both of them. An over-speeding dumper, carrying sand from the beach, struck her car with full force. The son lost consciousness as a result of a serious brain injury. She was so worried about her son that she didn’t realise that that her own ribs were broken.
The two were rushed to Dr Ziauddin Hospital in Clifton, where the boy was operated upon on Sunday, after a team of surgeons and doctors thought that that the surgery would be beneficial to the child, who has been unconscious. At least he is out of danger now. The ventilator has been removed and some movements of his limbs can be noticed. One hopes the recovery is complete.
The cost of surgery and medicines, as also the child’s one week stay in the ICU, has been to the tune of Rs200,000. Fortunately for Nida Bhatti, a single parent, the airline she works for had insured her and her two sons. Other accident victims are not so lucky.
Less than a fortnight ago, a 22-year-old man was hit by a dumper carrying sand from the beach. He died before he could be taken to hospital.
When this writer asked the DHA’s Director Vigilance, Lt-Col Javed Ahmed, why speed breakers have not been built in Phase 9, he said that the speed breakers would only be built once the roads have been metalled. When that will happen, he has no idea because that’s another department’s responsibility.
The dirt tracks, if one may call them that, have been in use by a large number of motorists and school vans for the past four years. But the authorities never got down to building proper roads in the area where quite a few schools, including the ones run by the DHA, are located.
The “efficient” vigilance wing of the DHA spares no pushcart owner if he parks his cart on the roadside. His cart and the contents thereon are picked up and hauled on to a truck. Similarly, if a house owner exceeds the time limit given to him for construction, his bags of cement are appropriated by the vigilance wing staff.
And yet the same people don’t keep a tab on the speeding dumpers and water tankers. “That’s the job of the traffic police,” the vigilance director told this writer. “We are short-staffed,” he added.
Why is the sand being removed from the beach and what kind of ecological disaster it will cause is for the environmentalists and ecologists to find out. But for his part, the administrator of the DHA should ensure that no heavy vehicles are allowed to ply in the entire DHA half an hour before and after school hours, as is the practice in developed and most developing countries.
Back to Shazim Khurram, his tormenter, the dumper driver, was arrested, not by the staff of the vigilance wing but by the police who responded to the phone call made by the people at the site of the accident.
