“PROVIDING security is not our [the government’s] duty.”

This sentence was uttered by a government official recently at a small gathering in Karachi in reply to a parent’s question asking whether it was safe to send children to school on Jan 12, the day many schools in the metropolis were supposed to reopen.

With schools opening less than a month after 150 or so children and teachers were killed in the Dec 16, 2014 Peshawar school massacre, parents across the country were asking the same questions.

Have security arrangements been made to make schools safe? Are these enough to tackle any untoward incident?

Although no one can even imagine the pain of parents who lost children in the school massacre, there is no doubt that everyone — especially parents — considers the murdered children as their own. This was seen in the outpouring of unabashed grief from all quarters.

The Peshawar school massacre is very real to all parents and they don’t want to risk the lives of more children because of the lax attitude of the government.

Even in a city like Karachi, which is not new to murders almost on a daily basis, the outpouring of grief following this massacre was unprecedented. Years of pent-up emotions due to the dangerous situation of the city were apparent following this macabre event.

The people of Karachi did indeed feel fear and anger followed by grief for the children lost in Peshawar. Everyone seemed to own them as their own and demanded that those responsible for this attack be brought to justice.

However, the government has been seen dragging its feet, more out of habit than anything else. The usual explanations are given of lack of resources; manpower; training etc. But these have become old and the extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary and swift measures.

Numerous meetings have been held by the government since the Dec 16 massacre and numerous committees have been formed, but very little concrete measures can be seen. This was apparent when even by Jan 12 there were many official and unofficial reports that security measures were still not in place.

It is understandable that the country and a city the size of Karachi lack resources and manpower to tackle the constant onslaught from terrorists. But this does not relieve the government of its responsibility. It needs to do more and fast.

The first thing that needs to be done is to decrease the manpower, vehicles and resources protecting ‘VVIPs’ and release these to provide security to the common people — the ones who cough up the tax funds to run the government machinery.

There are hundreds of schools in Karachi and with the current situation the government will be unable to provide security to them even if it wanted to. One possible solution could be that the government involve parents to keep vigil around schools and form groups that will take the responsibility of protecting their children. No one can be better than a parent in protecting children.

Parents should be made responsible for reporting any suspicious persons or movement in their areas on a special government helpline.

By sharing responsibility of providing security to children with parents, the government will be able to get the job done since everyone will have a stake in this. People will become more vigilant for their children’s sake, and there may be hope for some quick results.

Now that schools have reopened we need to focus on the sensitive situation. We cannot afford to lose more children. It is high time the government stopped passing the buck and focussed on its duty of serving and protecting the people of Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2015

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