Continued troubles for Peshawar

As if Peshawar has not suffered enough in the last decade, most of the city remained without gas for a day and a half, unable to perform the activities of daily living. By now, given the shoddy history of regular availability of basic necessities in this country, Peshawarites remained stealthy and continued their day-to-day activities as best they could. However, this is unacceptable, and a line must be drawn when there are reports of children attending school without heaving eaten breakfast due to the 36-hour interruption in gas supply. It is also dangerous when unskilled workers operate gas cylinders for alternative supply and the implications that has for human safety.

Work on the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, having reportedly disturbed gas supply many times before by contract workers damaging main pipelines, is becoming quite a nuisance. Earlier this month, traders protested losses they incurred due to the delay in completing the BRT project. Another vexing point about the project is the damage caused to heritage sites. Developers are responsible for inconvenience to residents and must take responsibility for causing major disturbances in daily life.

The situation of workers creating problems for residents primarily points to the fact that expertise in a skill is rare to find here. There are no standards for education or vocational training save for a few professions. A hapless truth is that impoverished labourers will continue to make the same basic mistakes without any intentions of doing so for the reason that they do not know any better. Resolving this situation is a long-term task but it critically highlights the requirement for standardising and formalising, to some degree, training for jobs that require skilled labour. Had this been in place, development of the BRT could have been swift and painless. Perhaps a reevaluation should be called wherein the utility of this project is reassessed because the cost-benefit equation seems to change every time with news about the BRT causing some problem or the other.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.