Urban safety oversight

Pakistan needs enforcement, not new bodies

Pakistan continues to develop an unwelcome reputation as a place where preventable urban disasters keep occurring because standards, already low, are regularly violated by all and sundry. And while rapid urbanisation is bringing in new, eye-catching building designs, the exterior facades often just mask the same shoddy workmanship that has led to deadly building collapses and fires.

A spate of recent disasters has led to renewed debate over the need to improve safety and quality standards, as well as disaster management, including the establishment of new oversight bodies. But Pakistan already has bodies to do all of these things — often with already overlapping mandates — and adding new oversight bodies would only lead to duplication of work. What would be better is to reform existing bodies and clear up any cross-jurisdictional challenges.

It is not impossible. Rescue 1122 is perhaps the shining star in this regard. The ambulance and emergency service responded to 2.5 million emergencies in 2025, with average response times of just a few minutes — among the best in the world, despite constraints. Expanding its role from just response to include oversight is doable, and we already know that the organisation is capable of world-class performance. Meanwhile, the national and provincial disaster management authorities have their problems, but are generally good at what they do. They do too little, focusing mainly on climate-induced catastrophes.

Rescue 1122 and the disaster managers would also have a lot less to do if Pakistan had better urban planning standards and enforcement — many road accidents are caused by poor urban planning, and some of the worst urban disasters could be prevented through better oversight. At the literal street level, missing manholes are also partly an urban planning failure. Every time disaster strikes, we see the everyday heroism of rescue workers. But what would be even better is if policymakers created a world in which these men and women had fewer opportunities to become heroes.