Another manhole death

Deaths such as that of an eight-year-old Dilbar Ali, who fell into an uncovered manhole in Korangi neighbourhood of Karachi earlier this week, can no longer be considered individual tragedies but rather a direct continuation of a systemic slaughter brought on by a mix of incompetence and corruption. Ali's death comes less than a month after the death of three-year-old Ibrahim, which saw the mayor and others make several empty promises to address the situation just a few weeks prior. That incident and those promises quickly slipped out of the news cycle, and it is clear that absolutely nothing has been done to address the situation.

Instead, the same cycle is repeating itself — public outrage has been met with a bankrupt script of suspended mid-level officials and hollow apologies, the bare minimum to reduce the temperature without requiring any meaningful human or legislative effort.

The true outrage lies in the architecture of the failure. Karachi is administered by a chaotic mosaic of over a dozen federal, military, provincial and municipal agencies, from the KMC and cantonment boards to the Water Board and private developers. This has created a meticulously crafted ecosystem of unaccountability. Rescue services say that during emergencies, they have to navigate the city's lethal sewer network blindly, as no unified blueprint or map exists.

Meanwhile, the much-touted Rs300 million allocation to UCs for maintaining manhole covers is comically low, covering maintenance costs for only about eight manholes per UC. On average, every UC has about 1,000 manholes.

Of late, city officials have also made outlandish claims of manholes being left open due to "malicious intent", without actually identifying who they believe is cruel enough to kill children to make the provincial and city government look bad. The mayor's job is not to cry over every life that is needlessly lost, but to ensure that no more lives are lost the same way. Let's hope the coming days will see more city workers addressing the problem and fewer government reps pretending to take responsibility without facing any consequences.