KARACHI: Though the brunt of the terrible heatwave, which took the lives of hundreds of people in Karachi, is over, there are still several relief camps set up across the city.

On Sharea Faisal, near the Christian cemetery, a lone man sits behind a swaying banner of Elaj Trust with a metal tub filled with some water. “The water is from the two slabs of ice that melted,” said the man, Mazhar Iqbal.

Asked what kind of services the camp offered, the man only shrugged and said that he got two crates of small water bottles that he distributed to the people who came asking for water. “Now I am chilling myself here while I wait for the people who made me sit here for my daily allowance.”

Asked if he knew any first aid, Mazhar only shook his head. “I only distribute water but after I run out of water to distribute, I can only apologise,” he smiled and said.

Meanwhile, another camp set up by the same NGO outside Cantonment Railway Station still had water and a rush of thirsty people reaching out for the bottles.

‘In their rush to grab the Iftar boxes we were distributing, they broke the stretcher and table’

At one of the six Aman Foundation Ramazan Relief Camps at Korangi Crossing one came across over a dozen volunteers and a couple of paramedics but no people in need of any kind of relief. “That’s because it’s not Iftar time yet. At Iftar all of us too fall short as you can’t imagine the number of people storming this place,” said one of the paramedics.

“We are still glad to be helping them as it is so much better watching healthy folk demanding food than people suffering from heatstroke. No they only come to us complaining about headaches or to get their blood pressure checked,” he said.

There was a yellow Aman ambulance parked right next to the camp. The paramedics said that they used it for serious patients who might need to lie down or required administering of a drip. “We had a stretcher here inside the camp,” the paramedic said while gesturing inside the tent stocked with bottles of water, a freezer, fans, first aid kits. “But yesterday at Iftar the crowd became pretty out of control. In their rush to grab the Iftar boxes we were distributing, they broke the stretcher and table,” he said.

Besides NGOs, several political parties, too, had set up their relief camps but most of those had packed up or were packing up after their leaders had their pictures taken with drums of sherbet, etc.

Perhaps the busiest camp on Wednesday was the Heatstroke Centre of Pakistan Army outside the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) emergency department. The store room for stretchers they painted and converted into an extra emergency ward run by army doctors and nurses. “Thankfully, now we only have a couple of patients left and they, too, are much better,” said Captain Batool on duty there. “Heatstroke patients need cooling down besides fluids as they are dehydrated,” she said. “Earlier, we had set up such camps at five to six places across Karachi but now we have only at three places — the JPMC, Civil Hospital and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.”

Outside, Sepoy Mir was busy distributing chilled bottles of water to women, children and anyone else in need of water. “We have been doing this for some nine days now while also distributing boxes of biryani at Iftar,” he said.

On being asked how they managed the Iftar rush, Sepoy Mir gave a laugh. “We are the army, sister, when we command the people to stand in line and approach us one by one, they listen!”

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2015

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