KARACHI: A lot of accidents happen every year in Pakistan in which thousands of precious lives are lost, and billions of rupees worth of public and private property is destroyed or damaged.
The authorities either don’t seem to take such incidents very seriously or perhaps they simply do not have the capacity to look into them adequately. I feel that this is primarily due to the fact that there are no professional investigators in the government who can uncover the reason why many of our accidents take place; be they on the road or in the form of fires inside houses or commercial establishments. Since the reasons are often left undetermined, in future such accidents are not usually prevented.
In the Pakistan Air Force, there is an extremely good system for investigation of accidents, especially those related to an air crash. The accident is thoroughly investigated and a report is prepared by dedicated and trained professionals, which is then presented to the senior officers. They then use it to shape policies and make decisions so as to avoid such mishaps in the future. That’s why the Pakistan Air Force has one of the lowest accident rates in the world despite its limited resources.
Perhaps, the civilian institutions should take a cue from the air force and replicate its system of investigating accidents.
Muhammad Asif
Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2012.
