FROM Karachi, a familiar story: another child dead, swallowed by an uncovered manhole while playing. This Monday, eight-year-old Dilbar became the eighth child to die in an uncovered Karachi drain in the year 2025. Nineteen adults also suffered the same fate. When last a child had fallen into an uncovered manhole — just weeks earlier, in fact — there had been an outpouring of grief, as well as anger against Karachi’s civic authorities. Even then, those protesting were callously told not to ‘politicise’ the issue. This time, the Karachi mayor repeated the phrase in response to what he perceived as a needlessly hostile question. He should not have. The death of so many children to a very preventable cause is not something that can be easily overlooked or written off. There are many residents of the city who feel they have been condemned to live in misery due to the consistent failures of Karachi’s authorities. If nothing else, they deserve empathy.

A similar example from elsewhere in the country stands out. After a child similarly fell to his death in an open manhole in Lodhran the same month, the deputy commissioner of the district was ordered transferred. Both the contractor responsible for the open manhole and the senior sub-engineer of Lodhran’s district council were booked. The chief officer of the district council was surrendered to their parent department, with the recommendation that they be suspended. The provincial government announced an AI system that could use security cameras to identify civic issues like open manholes “to strengthen rapid response capabilities and advance smart city management”. In short, visible action was taken at multiple levels to iterate that the authorities cared that a life had been lost. This is close to the kind of response citizens expect and appreciate. Those responsible for people’s lives need to be empathetic and demonstrate how they intend to address public concerns, not isolate themselves from their criticism.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2026