The commemoration ceremony began with consolation and prayers for the 74 residents, who perished when a section of the apartment building collapsed.
Flowers were laid at the footsteps of the dangerously leaning ruin of the building. In their heartbreaking orations, families of the deceased remembered those they lost to the killer quake.
Taimoor, Alishan and Leghari had lost their best friend in the tragedy. “Zoher was like a brother. We were together since the 9th grade,” said Leghari.
Time has moved on, said Taimoor. “But a part of us tells us as if it happened only yesterday.”
Zoher’s parents came from Libya after the tragedy. “It wasn’t easy to face them and tell them that their son didn’t survive under the rubble,” said Alishan.
“We will arrange your marriage like it’s never been done before,” Ms Shah recalled the promise her two brothers had made the night before the terrible happened. “Since then nobody has inquired after me,” moaned Shah who lived with brothers Latif and Imdad on the second floor. She wonders why she survived.
She went into a coma and it took a month before she came around. Nobody from the government ever helped, she said.
Overwhelmed with grief, and tears in her eyes, Shahnaz sat crying after planting a sapling in memory of her 17-year-old son Salman Rahat. Her younger son Danyal, 12, stood by.
Danyal was crushed under the rubble, but he survived. Even today he carries the physical wounds. He would undergo another surgery after four months. He wears a plaster on his left arm and leg.
Shahnaz said Danyal’s lungs and left leg had collapsed. His left elbow was crushed.
“We took him to Pims where doctors said amputation was the only choice. But luckily two doctors from the Aga Khan University Hospital saw it differently and ruled out that option. God bless them.”
Danyal today can walk but has to go through surgeries after the age of 18. Shahnaz lived with her family on the sixth floor of the collapsed portion.
Salman’s classmates — Sana and Myar — remember him as a fun-loving and a sweet person.
Government officials like minister of state for information Tariq Azim and CDA chairman Kamran Lashari, who had arrived there in black shining flag cars, were urged to acknowledge the errors on part of the government which resulted in the Margalla Towers tragedy.
“It pains me that these people representing the government do not take responsibility for criminal negligence. We all know that the apartments did not conform to standard building codes. I will never forgive them,” said Bushra.
While the guests were asked to plant a sapling each in memory of the deceased, some objected to Mr Lashari being part of the ritual. “It can hurt some of us here,” an affected person got up and said.
Frustrated and angry, many affected residents wanted to speak their hearts out. “It’s a lip service and promises after promises. We don’t want to plant trees to make up for our losses,” said a woman, adding, “we want tangible results. How long will we keep attending such gatherings?”
Muazzam Sultan, an affected member, said 74 people died. Nobody asked where the families of the deceased were and how they were doing. The authorities should have provided them some relief.
“Today we don’t ask for compensation but want replacement according to the same standards and as ordered by the Supreme Court. We want the guilty ones living abroad and those responsible here to be brought to justice. The fight for our rights will continue,” he said.
PPI news agency meanwhile reported that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, taking serious note of the hardships being suffered by the surviving residents of the collapsed Margalla Tower, has set up a special committee.
It quoted informed sources as saying the committee had been instructed to find urgently an equitable and fair solution to the claims of the affected people and their relatives who lost their lives.
The committee, to be headed by Secretary General Finance Naveed Ahsan, will meet soon, the agency said.
