KARACHI: City council seeks judicial inquiry: Bridge collapse
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Sept 3: Deploring the collapse of a bridge forming part of the recently constructed Northern Bypass, the City Council on Monday called for an inquiry into the causes of the fateful incident by judges of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Opposition member Abdul Razak of the Al-Khidmat group initiated the debate on the issue and was later joined by several members of the house.
Expressing his concern over the tragedy, Mr Razak said that the incident had raised a number of questions in the minds of the citizens as the project had been executed under the supervision of an army agency and inaugurated only on Aug 6 by the president in the Governor’s House.
Demanding a thorough probe into the incident, he urged the authorities to take exemplary action against all those officials involved in the project.
Terming the incident, that had claimed lives of the innocent citizens, a great tragedy, leader of the house, Asif Siddiqui of the Haq Parast group clarified that the federally funded project had been carried out by a federal agency and the city government had no role to play in that project.
He said that more than 40 flyovers, underpasses, bridges had been constructed in the city by several civic agencies.
Mr Siddiqui said that as many as 13 development agencies had been operating in the city but the CDGK took the lead by initiating relief activities on the day when a portion of the Northern Bypass collapsed. Besides, he added that the city government had already ordered survey of all the existing bridges and flyovers in the city and stressed the need for a single authority to look after the civic issues.
Mr Siddiqui also clarified that the federal communications minister was in no way responsible for the collapse as alleged by the opposition members.
However, Opposition leader Saeed Ghani of the Awam Dost Group said that the city government could not absolve itself from the responsibility as it was responsible for all development activities taking place in the city.
Questioning the transparency in the uplift projects, he said that house should be informed as to why all the contracts had been awarded to a particular group.
Suleiman Baloch said that the city government had been blamed for any mishap in the city just to gain political mileage.
Imran Khan of Haq Parast group urged all the house members not to politicise every issue and said that the NHA had already pointed out the fault and argued that we must also look into the report of foreign engineers. However, he supported the proposal of instituting a committee comprising judges of higher courts.
Haq Parast member Taver Ali criticised police action against the onlookers at the site.
Qaiser Mehmood, Shahjan Baloch, Afsar and Ramzan Awan took part in the debate.
Later, the treasury tabled a resolution on the tragedy of Northern Bypass. The resolution also called for the creation of single development authority in the city. At the same time, the opposition also moved an amendment to the resolution suggesting that Lyari and Malir development authorities should also be merged with the city government.
Upon this, the convenor of the house, Nasreen Jalil, adjourned the session for Tuesday.
