Safari Park incident: Parents of drowned boy want fences raised

Officials claim the boy jumped over the three-foot fence enclosing the lake

KARACHI: At around 4:30pm on Monday, 12-year-old Umar Haq of Mandhu Goth decided to explore the hills of Safari Park after school. No one knew it was going to be his last stroll in the park. At 5pm, his parents were informed that he fell into the lake.

Soon after the incident, the park management approached the fire department, divers of Edhi Foundation and the Pakistan Navy but the rescue operation could not be carried out properly as the sun had set.

The divers told them that they had to suspend the operations since it was getting dark, lamented the boy’s inconsolable father, Latif Baloch, as he spoke to The Express Tribune. The family had decided to call divers of their clan in Mubarak Village. “Around five or six young divers came and they fetched out the body in 10 minutes,” he said. “If I had stopped Umar from going to the park that day, he would have been with me.”



Umar was in third grade at the Madhu Goth School. “Every day after school he used to stroll in the park,” said Baloch. “If he was the son of some affluent personality, rescue teams would have thronged the park to save him,” he said, adding that he had been told by park officials that the operation had been halted due to the dark. “I was told that within five hours, the body would come up itself,” he said.

According to KMC’s culture, sports and recreation director Raza Abbas Rizvi, the standard operating procedures of Pakistan Navy is that their divers only dive during daylight. “There isn’t any light inside the lake,” he explained, claiming when the navy divers refused to carry out the operation, KMC’s director of municipal services, Masood Alam, called KMC divers from Churna Island, who retrieved the body. Rizvi added that KMC has only one diver but he does not have an oxygen kit. However, a security guard saidthey do not have any divers.

Safety measures

Baloch does not want any other family to suffer this way. He requested the park management install a proper fence as this was not the first such incident. Seconding his statement, another resident of Madhu Goth said it was the fifth or sixth drowning in the lake. “Around three years back, a child drowned here,” he said, explaining the child did not belong to their neighbourhood.

According to Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) Safari Park additional director, Kazim Hussain the height of the grill surrounding the lake is between 1.5 and three feet.

It was not possible to fall in the lake while playing or walking, said Hussain. Unless one hopped over the grill and edged towards the lake, it was not possible, he explained. Hussain shared that it was common for residents of nearby goths to stroll through the park and the management never charges them any entry free.

Meanwhile, KMC’s culture director Raza Rizvi said the fence was built in 1985. “It’s written all around the park that going beyond the fence is prohibited,” he said, adding that there are plans to increase the fence height to six feet.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.