EDITORIAL: We know that Count Victor Lustig fraudulently sold Eiffel’s Tower twice. And it is also a fact that thieves stole loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewellery valued at $100 million from a bank in Antwerp, making it the biggest heist in history. But we didn’t know that thieves can also steal a 60-feet-long bridge in presence of scores of people. The 500-tonne iron bridge was stolen by thieves who posed themselves as department officials. They used gas cutters and earthmoving machinery to break down the abandoned bridge.
The task took them three days, as the parts of the metaled structure were rusted and won’t get loose easily. But the villagers’ curiosity as to why the bridge was being dismantled and at whose order didn’t last long. They were told by one of the operators, who happen to be a staff member of the irrigation department, that the ‘work’ was being carried out on higher officers’ order in compliance with the villagers’ own request that they had made earlier.
So the entire operation continued without any interference and fuss for three days. As the bridge was now scrap it was loaded in trucks and taken away — for sale in the market where purchase and sale of metal scrap is a roaring business. As soon as the operation was over, a government officer who happened to be the Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) filed the complaint about the theft. Why didn’t he interrupt? His answer was that during that time he was on sick leave! He is now under arrest.
Given the realities on ground, the theft of an abandoned bridge in India should not have made news and splashed all over in Pakistan the way it did. Here in Pakistan, too, robberies of this kind are quite common. The main target of abandoned or out-of-use state property in Pakistan is the sale of abandoned rail tracks and theft of saleable items at hundreds of railway stations where trains don’t stop anymore. Ideally, the concerned railway authorities should have by now extracted the no more usable tracks — and these are thousands of miles long — and sold these in the market.
It is perhaps the best time to do it in view of the fact that the construction business is in good stride now. As for the abandoned railway stations, and these are hundreds in number, should be used to open dispensaries and schools. And some of the bridges, like the Alexandra Bride on River Chenab, should be preserved as monuments to assume that once upon a time the railways in this part of the world were the best, but no more.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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