Who is to blame?

The sense of shock and anguish the collapse of the Northern Bypass Bridge in Karachi and the resultant loss of ten lives has caused nation-wide, is not going to go away easily. The least the public expects of those in charge is to give clear and convincing answers as to what went wrong and why.
The bridge, part of a prestige infrastructure project that linked Karachi with the Hub industrial estate, came crashing down only three weeks after it was inaugurated by President General Pervez Musharraf amid a lot of fanfare.
Understandably, the authorities, fearing public anger, are in a state of panic. But instead of making focused efforts to get to the truth, they are trying to take actions and offer explanations, which are hard to accept. For instance, the Ministry of Communications is reported to have suspended at least four officials of the National Highway Authority (NHA) in a hurry.
Communications Minister Shamim Siddiqui is also quoted as having told the media that the National Logistics Cell (NLC), which built the bridge for the NHA, has been blacklisted. Enter the Chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, (NDMA) Lieutenant General Farooq Ahmad Khan (retd), the scene on Sunday. In an apparent bid to deflect the blame from NLC, he told a press conference that a major structural flaw was detected in the span of the bridge in March 2006. According to him, a private engineering firm, responsible for the construction, had consulted a Greek firm to remove the flaw, and the latter, after some structural alterations, had given the bridge a clean bill of health.
Going by this version, the flaw was of a structural nature, which was an issue between the NLC and its contracting firm, who had turned to the Greek company for help. In that case, what was the justification for suspending NHA officials? The NDMA chairman also said that the names of a couple of people who could be responsible for the incident have been placed on the Exit Control List. Pending proper investigation, all this looks merely like a deliberate yet pointless attempt at pacifying public anger.
Experts are reluctant to accept the structural flaw explanation, though not ruling it out as one of the different possibilities. The design, the construction, or some of the material such as the use of Tor steel, all or any of these could be the culprit. Whatever is to blame must be uncovered. It is relevant to recall here that a while ago another prestige project, Coastal Highway, was badly damaged at several points due to heavy rains. Roads and bridges, needless to say, are built to last for long, and if such an important highway gives way in a rainy season, something is deeply wrong with the system.
Those responsible for the construction of the Coastal Highway got away with substandard construction because, luckily for them, it did not cause any harm to life or property, and, of course, it was located far from any of the big urban centres. But the Northern Bypass is right in the country's commercial centre, and its collapse has caused the loss of human life. People want to know who is to blame. An independent, high-level inquiry must be launched into the tragedy, and its results made public so that those responsible are punished, no matter who they might be.