This incident is hardly the first time a guard shot dead a minor
KARACHI: On September 4th a security guard of a shopping plaza in Faisalabad shot a minor boy dead. The fault of the 12-year-old boy — if one could even call it that — was he wanted to enter the plaza to catch a kite, and when reprimanded by the guard for doing so, the two had arguments that angered the guard enough to pull the trigger of a gun on him.
This incident is hardly the first time a guard shot dead a minor. A year ago, a security official shot dead a boy after he mistook him for a ghost, as the little kid in his innocence was playing a game by trying to scare people off adorning a mask. These instances make one wonder on what basis are these security guards hired. Do employers recruit them from a known agency? Are they even trained for the job? And most importantly, what commands are they given to deal with a particular situation because ‘shoot at sight’ is rather a dangerous order to be given.
We need to take these incidents seriously and question the authorities that have appointed these guards rather than only holding the security personnel responsible.
Ramla Buksh
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2017.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
