During his brief visit to Karachi, Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif has made an effort to ascertain the cause of unprecedented deaths in Karachi and fix responsibility. Presiding over a meeting with provincial and federal government officials, the PM has sought a comprehensive investigation report about the more than 1,200 deaths in Karachi. He has called for the identification of the departments whose negligence caused deaths on such a large scale. Ordering a probe into the heatwave calamity is a good step but more important is to ensure transparency in such an inquiry. How can the Sindh government hold itself responsible for these deaths when it miserably failed to protect the lives of citizens? The federal government needs to form an independent inquiry commission that should hold an impartial and transparent inquiry against all those departments and institutions that shirked their responsibilities during the crisis. On the basis of the commission’s report, stern action should be taken against the responsible departments. Our country is unique in the sense that here inquiry reports are compiled but no action is taken even after fixing responsibility. This ‘tradition’ should come to an end now. After a massive heatwave that swept through India and claimed more than 1,100 lives, our Met office should have alerted the people in those areas that were probably going to be hit next by the heatwave. Unfortunately, no warning was issued by the Met office. The National and provincial Disaster Management Authorities also showed criminal negligence and added to the public misery. In fact, the provincial as well as federal governments remained sluggish in their response to the huge-scale human tragedy in Sindh. Now, the premier is asking the Sindh government to establish a strong coordination mechanism between provincial and federal government departments, a step that should have been taken much earlier. The federal government is also equally responsible for the deaths along with the Sindh government. The rulers cannot absolve themselves of all blame. Most people succumbed to the heatwave due to the lack of awareness about precautionary measures to be taken in such harsh weather conditions. If the concerned departments had launched awareness campaigns at the start of the crisis, a large number of precious lives could have been saved. The energy crisis also exacerbated the situation. K-Electric should also be held accountable and taken to task for its failure to ensure increased electricity supply. The concerned authorities should have taken measures to pre-empt the situation but nothing was done, which can only be lamented. We should learn a lesson from the current tragedy and work out a comprehensive plan to cope with the effects of such natural calamities in future. *