I would like to draw your kind attention towards the recent incident in Landhi where eight children died and more than 200 fell ill after consuming contaminated water. The children died from contamination were of eight months to eight years age.
It is not the 1st episode. In the past three to four years a similar incident of loss of lives occurred but no action to tackle the issue.
The same type of incident occurred in February 2003, in Landhi area, when nine lives were lost due to use of contaminated water. But, surprisingly, at that time the Water Board did not take any responsibility for the incident.
In their press release they clarified that they had taken samples from all parts of the Landhi area, and checked all the pipelines, and after testing the samples in laboratories, all samples were declared fit for human consumption.
Further, they clarified that "The sale of unhygienic meat, which is transported on donkey carts to the area, vegetables grown in sewage water, gola-ganda and other such things might be responsible for the epidemic, on the other hand, the samples taken by Health Department from different parts of the Landhi area were declared unfit and the Water Board was blamed for criminal negligence. After some time, the case was hidden in files without proper investigation.
It was also appeared in one of the Urdu newspapers that the land mafia has illegally acquired railway land and provided illegal connections through sewerage pipe lines to residents of Landhi area due to which precious lives were lost. It also observed that during the water shortage, water is supplied in oil tankers, which is also very dangerous for human consumption.
Due to illegal connections and lack of planning, mixing of toxic waste with the water in Landhi and Korangi Industrial Area might also be the one of the reason for hazardous contaminated water.
What I would like to point out, here, is that we do not admit our faults. Political parties are exploiting this issue for personal political gains against their opponents.
Blaming others and not accepting our own fault has become a habit for us. The liability of the loss of lives will lie on the Water Board and the land mafia and those people who were involved in the illegal land allocation of railway land as well as those politicians who have nothing to do with basic problems and needs of common man.