Daily Times

“She needs help,” murmured a neighbour, who’d been called out just before the crack of dawn when the sounds of a muezzin were drifting from a minaret. It was an expecting mother, Saira, whose delivery had come to age. The bouts of intense pains, nausea and anxiety weren’t being deemed as alarming as otherwise in routine times. Last night, she was put to sleep by her elderly mom who didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. Saira looked shattered and her fragile body was shivering as the mature anomaly trapped inside would move. It was indeed a night that never seemed to have an end!

By the time the blazing sun rays enveloped the vast wheat fields of Bains, a village in district Rawalpindi, the hapless woman had crouched down in excruciation after having the quacks tried out their methods on her falling empire. It was then the paramedics were approached. The only female nurse available was in Chak Beli Khan – a roadside town that shares a boundary with Bains and Pindori villages and provides an inlet passage from the main road. The nurse carried out a general physical inspection and prescribed no more experiments with Saira but to admit her to a hospital in the twin city, Islamabad-Rawalpindi, some one-and-a-half hour-long drive away from the village. It was on the cards. Having no facility hospital in this populous constituency of Rawalpindi district, the dwellers have to travel long distances to approach maternity hospitals specialising in caring for women during pregnancy and childbirth.

Saira’s body was growing complications. The nurse proposed that she could be taken to a special nearby medical facility.

Saira’s body was growing complications. The nurse proposed that she could be taken to a special nearby medical facility developed by Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL). The company had been operating in the area for many decades and barely facilitating the local development needs apart from keeping their lands for Oil and gas drilling at miserable annual rates. The villagers agreed and Saira was taken to POL only to hear straight refusals. The representatives pulled out a regulations sheet mentioning that the facility primarily accommodates the wives of company employees.

The household was shattered and wrecked. A van was booked and the four family members, including Saira’s father-in-law, mother and niece set off for Rawalpindi General Hospital. Her husband had left for Saudi Arabia a few months ago for job prospects, but couldn’t make the bare minimum to provide for her family’s needs. In the next two days, they experienced serious financial shocks before they were sent to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). A staff member showed them the long queues and advised them to consult a facility in the G-8 sector, Islamabad, where a famous female doctor with special knacks of Cesarean sections could help them. She carried out the surgical delivery through a cut (incision) made in the mother’s abdomen and uterus. The operation that hardly took forty-five minutes cost them an arm and a leg. Those three days brought them down into dire financial straits as they had to pay for room rent and surgery. The mother and baby were taken to a village where a new turn of events had started setting feet.

This time around, Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) roped into the realm of miseries. It is located right between the two villages, Bains and Pindori, while the latter is a D&P Lease area located approximately 50 kilometres south of Islamabad. Pakistan Oilfields Ltd (POL) works in joint ventures, a common practice with petroleum production companies.

It had hit the gas reservoir along with its partners Attock Oil Company (AOC) and Oil & Gas Development Company Ltd (OGDCL), and the news was making rounds in media across the country. The then Minister of Petroleum, an influential politician of the area, announced that he’d inaugurate this methane gas reservoir. The POL management showed technical constraints, potential hazards attached to keeping gas anomalies underground for longer, and the dearth of on-ground equipment ie. Blow Out Preventers/physical barriers, but all in vain. There was no way his staff could meet them halfway as the inauguration might provide conducive preludes to Mr Minister’s next election campaign.

By the time he arrived after a day-long delay, the prevention measures had already started showing malfunctioning. Many cushions at the subsurface were toppled and the underneath gas seemed grumpy: foaming at mouth with indignant rage. As the inauguration wrapped up, the area had to be cordoned off, right away, as the poisonous methane gas had started diffusing across. The subsurface methane gas pressure had subdued normal hydrostatic pressure provided by the drilling crew and gushing across gradually. Big cracks were appearing across the terrain and those were conspicuous in a kilometer radius. The leakage point was cascading heavy fumes of methane gas around and the gradient of diffusion had drawn bead at Bains Villagers. A large number of villagers were having pulmonary congestion in the first few hours and then it started becoming excessively intolerable. Certainly, a moment when thousands were dragged to the brink of catastrophe and the prospects looked bleak.

Consequently, mass migration happened. The residents of Bains had to move to the neighbourhood, Pindori, where they were provided with accommodation for the next few days. Among the migrants was Saira, who was battling with yet another complication. Nobody knew she was suffering from “Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)”, a complication rarely developed in post C-Section phase. Her right foot had started swelling, and skin darkened and warmed around the painful area. It was an emergency medical condition when a blood clot formed in a deep vein could cause straight death if it hit any sensitive organs internally through the bloodstream.

The chaos was unbearable. Saira’s family had already jolted with substantial impoverishment: disarrayed, confused and emasculated, they were vulnerable indeed. Despite the deteriorating condition of Saira, her family couldn’t take her to a medical facility. The blood grew thicker and thicker until she breathed her last in her mother’s lap. The blood clot hit and ruptured her lungs and she had to bid farewell to everyone who cared, who provided for her, who helped her and even the POL representatives, who denied her admission to their medical facility.

The writer can be reached at mbilal.isbpk@gmail.com and Facebook/mbilal.16