Chief Minister (CM) Punjab Usman Buzdar, under fire along with the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) federal government over the Murree tragedy, has formed a five-member committee to ‘investigate’ the causes and lapses that led to the death of at least 22 stranded tourists.
During a visit to the stricken areas on January 9, 2022 amidst ongoing relief efforts by the military and civilian agencies, the CM also announced Murree would be elevated to a district and ‘senior’ officers posted as preventive measures against the recurrence of such a tragedy. In the same breath, he announced Rs 17.6 million compensation for the families of the victims.
The response of the chief executive of Punjab leaves one breathless. It has become the ‘fashion’ to set up all sorts of committees after any event or development of importance. One may be excused for wondering if an ‘investigation’ is actually required into the Murree disaster. Surely the facts are by now well known and crystal clear. Warnings of an impending heavy snowfall (if not blizzard) by the meteorological authorities failed to rouse the Punjab (or federal) government from their Lotus-eaters state of somnolence.
The CM was reportedly in a meeting when the disaster struck. Surviving victims are reported to have said no warnings and/or barriers to the influx of thousands of vehicles stuffed full with families, including children, were available or put in place. In its enthusiasm to promote internal tourism, the PTI government has gone many steps further than past governments in lifting any and all restrictions on entering Murree or the Galliyat area. In more clement weather, this has destroyed the once serene atmosphere of the hill station, encouraged the irresistible rise of commercial activity, and now proved a recipe for disaster in extreme weather.
One remembers Murree and the surrounding Galliyat from childhood and youth as a calm, sparsely populated, beautifully serene, heavenly retreat from the hustle and bustle of the cities. If memory serves, Murree had a system of entry permits for all vehicles, which were parsimoniously delivered to save the hills from the effects of motorised transport and overcrowding.
The Murree Mall is where the gentry strolled in their finest, armed with umbrellas and walking sticks to take tea and meals in the famous Sam’s and Lintott’s restaurants. Today that same Mall is teeming with shops, ‘hotels’, eateries and what have you, so crowded that it puts the bazaars of larger cities to shame. To still call it a hill station seems a stretch.
I had the opportunity to visit Simla in India some years ago for a conference. Simla and Murree were the two most famous hill stations before Independence. Simla was also known as the seat of many history-making conferences and meetings between the Muslim League (remember the Quaid’s photo embarking in a manually pulled rickshaw to attend), Congress and the British colonial authorities in the run up to Independence.
Simla’s name has also gone down in history as the venue of the post-1971 breakaway of East Pakistan meeting between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi that led to the Simla Accord of 1972. On my visit, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that although Simla was larger than the old Murree, it had retained the atmosphere and ambiance of a hill station unperturbed. Casual inquiries revealed that the restrictions on building and entry of vehicles inherited from the past were still strictly enforced, whereas we have long ago abandoned these to shortsighted considerations in Murree.
What cannot be condoned irrespective of these musings and comparisons is the sheer incompetence, carelessness and even callousness of the PTI Punjab and federal authorities in the face of an impending disaster. It appears the government was asleep at the wheel. Hand wringing after the event, even financial compensation for deaths cannot assuage the shock and grief of the victims’ families, who saw an innocent trip to have fun in the hills turned into a nightmare of ghoulish proportions.
Usman Buzdar should be told that these attempts at assuaging the wounds of the victims’ families just do not cut it. The ‘investigative’ committee, which has been ordered to report in seven days (a reflection of the flak the government is receiving), is a complete waste of time. The answers are already known.
Humanity’s ability to lapse into taking advantage of tragedy and difficulties was reportedly fully on display in the shape of astronomical charges for accommodation, food and any other necessities to the struggling trapped families. Even women and children’s plight did not melt these stonehearted merchants of profiteering. Of course there were also reports of local citizens coming to the rescue and succour of the helpless, trapped victims.
But the pendulum most certainly swung towards callous exploitation of people’s plight, the few good deeds notwithstanding. Now the authorities are frothing at the mouth to take ‘strict’ action against the exploiters. This too sounds like so much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The PTI government is in trouble on quite a few fronts of late. Starting with the trouncing it received at the hands of its nemesis Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) in the recently held first round of local bodies elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which signalled to astute observers that the establishment seemed to have adopted a ‘hands-off’ policy leaving the PTI to its own devices, to the PTI party funding scandal exposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan’s scrutiny committee, the mini-budget and the IMF conundrum, the urea crisis, and the mother of them all, the Afghan crisis and its implications for that country’s internal situation, bilateral Pak-Afghan tensions over the border fencing and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the isolation of Kabul and collateral isolation of Pakistan, point, amongst other failings, to the clock ticking for the incumbents.
Murree and other debacles indicate that neither the country nor the people of Pakistan are safe with this government in the driving seat.
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Copyright Business Recorder, 2022