Murder on the highways'

There are more deaths on a daily basis on our highways and roads then perhaps in a battle zone. Some of us take a perverse pleasure in killing ourselves and others. The holiday and wedding seasons are the worst. On Saturday, 23 members of a wedding party were killed and 30 injured when a fast-driven bus fell from a flyover in Chichawatni.

On Thursday two highway accidents, one in Punjab near Sadiqabad and other in Sindh near Khanpur, claimed 15 lives. In the Khanpur accident, all the victims were 'lahiaras', professional reapers, going for their early morning labour in a donkey cart.

In these two cases also, involving a trailer and an oil tanker, speeding was the unmistakable culprit. Despite the frequency with which lives are lost and crippled in highway accidents, the authorities seem to be totally unconcerned. They appear to believe that these are acts of God and nothing can be done to prevent them.

Buses, trucks, trailers, tankers are not owner driven, and those driving them to that extent feel free to drive as recklessly as they want. Often they are overworked, themselves driven to make more trips per day and bring in more money for the owners.

Traffic rules are not observed in heavily policed city limits; one can imagine the condition on country and mountain roads. How licences are issued is no secret. There are strict procedures to be gone through for a licence, including tests conducted by senior police officers.

Age, experience, judgment, anticipation, fitness of vehicle - all are supposed to be factors that have to be adjudged. But the police have evolved their own methods of issuing licences for their own benefit.

The licence-seeker does not even have to go to the licensing office if he has the right connections or money to grease palms. Where speeding is concerned, there are literally no checks on the highways except on the motorway in Punjab or the Karachi-Hyderabad superhighway.

Laws exist only on paper. The relevant clause pertaining to dangerous driving - Section 279 - prescribes a maximum punishment of between six months and one year for the guilty.

Section 320 relating to accidents involving fatalities carries a sentence ranging from three to five years. How many people are convicted even under these lenient sections? When an attempt was made to amend this law in the 1980s and increase the punishment, heavy vehicle owners went on strike and the amendment was withdrawn.

What then can be done? Even within the constraints imposed in our country by lack of respect for the law by both rulers and ruled, the accident toll can be reduced if the government began to care a little more for the safety of the citizens.

Speed governors for inter-city buses, trucks and trailers have long been advocated, but does anyone listen? One of the ironies of the situation is that we need better roads and highways.

Better roads mean more vehicles and more speed. We don't necessarily have to start crawling, but certainly urgent attention has to be paid to reviewing licensing and traffic laws, implementing them with greater vigour, stepping up mobile patrols, pinpointing dangerous spots on the highways, lighting up feeder roads in districts and fixing responsibility on owners of heavy vehicles. First aid stations to provide medical help in accidents are also an absolute necessity. The wanton loss of lives in road accidents (and boat drownings) must be checked.

Unwarranted mystery

If the government is to be believed, then in the past week alone it has notched up two successes in the war against terror. First, Asim Ghafoor, a member of a banned extremist organization who carried a reward of half a million rupees, was killed in a police encounter in Karachi.

He is described as a close associate of Amjad Farooqui, who also died in a somewhat mysterious police encounter in Nawabshah in September. According to the police, both Ghafoor and Farooqui were involved in several high-profile cases, including the attacks on the president and the prime minister and the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Then, Naveedul Hassan, a suspect in the bombing of the US consulate in Karachi, has been detained by law-enforcement agencies, reportedly at the Wagah border.

These developments remain shrouded in mystery. Details of Naveed's arrest are sketchy, with some reports suggesting he was arrested elsewhere. As for Ghafoor, the official version is that he died in a shootout following a raid to arrest him.

The murder of two prime suspects in the Daniel Pearl case in encounters in a space of three months is itself a little intriguing. There have been several newspaper reports in the past suggesting that Omar Saeed Sheikh, the main accused in the case and whom a court eventually sentenced to death, was not Pearl's actual killer or even the mastermind of the plot.

The capture of such high-value suspects could have provided the authorities with a wealth of information regarding terror groups. While all information about anti-terror operations, understandably, cannot be made public, claims about arrests and shootouts should come in a way that establishes the credibility of government actions. Perhaps the interior minister should hold a comprehensive briefing to inform the public of the precise progress made so far in the crackdown on terrorists or militants.

Power on war footing

It makes much sense to install additional power generation units for Karachi on a war footing. According to the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, the city faces a shortfall of 600 megawatts and this is one of the major reasons for power breakdowns and load shedding.

The KESC has proposed setting up a 350-MW gas-fuelled power project to remove at least half of the yawning deficit. Earlier, the utility had proposed acquiring a barge-mounted plant.

The idea was to set aside rules specified under the 2002 power policy, because the power crisis in the city demanded emergency measures. This plea, however, was turned down by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.

While Nepra is right in refusing to allow such a precedence to be set, the fact remains that Karachi faces an acute power crisis which needs to be tackled on an emergency basis. One wonders why nothing was done over the past years to obviate this shortfall through proper planning.

Despite the claims by the KESC's management about revamping the system and bringing down line losses, the ground reality seems to be different. Line losses, as has been repeatedly said, stand at 40 per cent, when the internationally accepted level is under 10 per cent.

The wastage of so much electricity is a national loss that needs to be checked. Part of the problem is the growth in power theft, especially through the 'kunda' system. The ultimate sufferers of this practice are the bill-paying power consumers, who endure frequent power cuts, fluctuations and low voltage.

If line losses are brought down on a war footing as well, the KESC will have enough power at its disposal to help bridge the gap. As things stand, power rates in Pakistan are one of the highest in the region.

Lower tariffs are needed for industrial units to make Pakistan's exports competitive in world markets. There is an equally urgent need to make power supply available to consumers at competitive rates. Both the KESC and the government need to put their heads together to achieve this objective.