The incident, which took place at the Alhamra cultural complex, reflects very poorly on crowd management.
KARACHI: This refers to a report in your newspaper of January 10 titled “Lahore tragedy: Three students killed at concert stampede”. The incident, which took place at the Alhamra cultural complex, reflects very poorly on crowd management and carelessness on the part of the administration of the college which did not stop a crowd twice the size of the venue’s capacity from attending the concert.
The management of AlHamra Cultural Complex should also be made answerable because quite clearly safety and security rules were not followed. One wonders whether the Punjab education department has set down any rules for educational institutions that wish to organise functions for their students.
At the very least, when a function where a large crowd is expected to attend is being arranged, a no-objection certificate should be made mandatory and it should be related to safety and security issues. Also, emergency services in the area should be told in advance so that they can be called in without any delay. This is the norm in many developed countries and there is no reason why we cannot replicate such a system in Pakistan.
Sqn-ldr (retd) S Ausaf Husain
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2012.
