EDITORIAL: It is yet another instance of our officialdom's callous disregard for public needs desperately requiring attention. The 2005 earthquake caused massive death and destruction in vast swathes of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Ordinary citizens from all over the country had rushed to offer whatever succour they could to the affected families. Nearly 16 years on, those whose responsibility it was to restore necessary services have failed to deliver to a large extent. A case in point is that of some 540 schools destroyed by the earthquake that remain to be rebuilt. A three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmad, has now intervened on the people's behalf. In suo motu hearings held last Wednesday, the court put Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) chief on the spot for blatant dereliction of duty.
The reason is not paucity of funds. As the CJ recalled, people at the time gave their hard-earned savings, international community donated plenty of money (over $5 billion), and the government also allocated substantial amounts of funds for reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the earthquake-affected areas. Yet so many school buildings remain to be restored, depriving a huge number of children of the only chance to acquire education, adding to the country's already dismal literacy rate-the poorest in the whole of South Asia. Making a bad situation worse, the court was informed, have been extortionists demanding money from contractors engaged in construction activity. Clearly, the provincial ERRA as well as the government have some explaining to do for their inexcusable negligence of the past 16 years. As usual, though, the KP Advocate General tried to pass the buck to previous governments, telling the court that the present PTI government had rebuilt 148 schools and made them functional in two months' time. Considering that the party has been ruling the province for eight years out of the 16 lost years, that is no great achievement. Besides, the quality of new constructions is said to be a lot less than satisfactory. In fact, the CJ observed that the new buildings seem to endanger the lives of teachers and children, and that at the existing levels of corruption in KP the government cannot deliver service to the people. The court has directed ERRA chairman to present a comprehensive report on the issue at the next hearing also directing the government to rebuild schools and provide security to the school staff (from extortionists?). And, of course, responsibility for lack of action in this regard is to be assigned to whomever it may belong. Needless to say, all the damaged schools not only ought to be rebuilt expeditiously but also designed to provide seismic safety since they are located in quake-prone areas.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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