Waiting for PUC

Published July 13, 2012

UNREGULATED mass human activity during the last about two decades has turned the Himalayan mountaintops of Nathiagali, Thandiani, Ayubia and Murree into the inveterate mountain-lovers nightmare and a sprawling playground for the scavengers.

The small mountaintop of Dunga Gali where the rich and the famous of the country have their summer houses is only slightly better off though sliding fast towards the abyss. The mountainous retreat has a British era hotel restored to meet the requirements of the modern day’s tourists. It was here one pleasant early afternoon this last June when one suddenly found oneself blamefully involved in a sort of eavesdropping. While reading on a plastic chair from Hugh Walpole’s oldest edition of ‘The Cathedral’ and appreciating the thick green wall of firs in the foreground during lengthening pauses, one was distracted by some movement that announced the occupation of nearby chairs by a not so elderly couple.

The lady with her puffy hair dyed in a grotesque shade of yellow and speaking simultaneously in chaste Punjabi and English was on her cell phone no sooner than she had assumed a comfortable posture on the chair. She looked to be quite pleased with herself, and her spouse, as she kept repeatedly referring to their outing as the ‘oldies’ honeymoon.’ She also looked to have been exasperated by the earlier part of her visit when she shared her frustration with her family, or perhaps a friend on the other side of the phone, ‘Oh dear, I can’t tell you to what extent Murree was stinking, and warm thus forcing us to escape to the relative cool and tranquil environs of Dunga Gali.’

Earlier as a part of the annual rituals, one had stayed for a couple of nights at the neighbouring mountaintop of Ayubia, and as fate would have it was privy to a very sinister kind of bazaar gossip. If inquired into what the gossip centered around, and what happened subsequently a few days later, a volley of unsavoury questions would have to be answered.

It was around noon time, and visitors, in droves, were announcing their arrivals through noisy honking and a pall of dust raised by their careless driving. Business was as usual at the site of the decrepit teetering chairlifts installed in the early sixties of the 20th century. Excited fun lovers, with children outnumbering the adults, had queued alongside the profusely leaking and stinking public toilets to set out on what clearly appeared to be a hazardous adventure. Nearby half a dozen welders were seen welding some broken machinery and what appeared to be parts of the infrastructure of the chairlifts.

The workmen were not talking in whispers, but in fact loudly enough for all those in the hearing range to voice their concerns. ‘I have informed them several times to replace the entire apparatus as it would not work anymore but they would not listen,’ a visibly vexed welder was heard protesting while fixing some broken part. Another trio of workers had climbed the poles holding the structure at some distance from the base and was found engaged in some repair work at the completion of which they conveyed an okay signal to the operator.

A week after the workers at the site of the chairlifts were thus found conversing a dreadful accident was reported from Ayubia. A woman received grievous injuries when the chairlifts broke down. Some newspaper reports said the accident had left the lady paralyzed. The authorities acted by closing down the veritable circus of death and the promise of a fact finding inquiry.

Which could that authority be? Perhaps, an authority tasked with the development of the mountaintop of Ayubia and the rest of such tourist resorts, as one came to know about the existence of one from the garbage bins placed at odd points with the acronym ‘GDA’ scribbled thereon. If such is indeed the case then this could be cited as the best manifestation of natural justice for such an authority must deservedly rest in the bins when a hundred or more people are suspended in the air over precipitous ditches and glens and left at the mercy of a suspect device.Visitors to the mountains in the summers would verify the brisk movement of officials with pomp and show. Every Tom, Dick and Harry worth his name, and title, must be accompanied by a retinue of protocol cars in order to be recognized as a credible source of authority. Even small time minions tasked with administrative matters in the official machinery would not easily part with this symbol of share arrogance, and false and transitory pride. But may one ask where were all those minions resting when the lives of dozens of unsuspecting tourists were thus hanging by faulty cables?

Officialdom is increasing by the day. There are five people for a job that could be done more efficiently by two in a system where performance is measured. The state of affairs on the mountaintops tells a very sad story. All mountaintops are invariably littered with chicken entrails, polythene bags, empty tetra packs and plastic bottles. The Nathiagali bazaar is a cesspool of stinking refusal of all description. In Ayubia right in the middle of the bazaar where the area’s old name ‘Ghora Dhaka’ could be seen scrawled on the old dispensary as a reminder of the glory of the bygone days, a mountain of the chicken entrails is piling up posing a challenge to the legitimacy of any authority worth its name.

One of the finest still surviving legacy of our much maligned colonial past is the dense forest on the mountaintops with trees tall enough to force one into evasive action to consider their heights. Careless disposal of wastes is an ever present threat not only to the forest but also to the wildlife that keeps fascinating the tourists. If all those more than one hundred or so years old trees were to disappear all of a sudden as a result of our negligence and are replaced by new saplings none of those living souls now would be able to behold the present view ever again.

Of what use is such massive official machinery sans originality, creativity and even a modicum of vision. Saquib Ullah Khan, an audacious member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, minced no words in his budget speech when he pointed to the burgeoning growth of the government. ‘Who on earth would come and invest in the private sector in this province, and why would anyone seek a job in the non public sector when you are over feeding the negligent and inefficient officials?’ Mr. Khan blurted out while opposing a pay raise in the budget. Given the state of ignorance, it is anybody’s guess how many people even understood the significance of this statement let alone endorsing it.

Ridiculous is the name of the game in the public sector where the construction of septic tanks and drains take officials on foreign tours for studies. No doubt then that where vision, professionalism and creativity mean so little and where jacks get to do all jobs, it would be next to impossible to operate chairlifts and keep the mountains clean.

A very senior official recently referred to the working in the public sector as ‘PUC induced.’ A PUC refers to the paper under consideration that leads to the back and forth movement of a file for days till patience is tested to the limits. Perhaps, a timely PUC to the authority concerned would have saved a respected lady and her family excruciating pain for the rest of their lives.

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