Daily Times

The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, chaired by PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, on Tuesday held an exclusive session to discuss the tragic incident. K Electric’s delegation apprised the committee that K electric’s offer to bear medical and educational expense of Umer is intact along with monthly stipend and upfront payment on humanitarian ground.

The committee termed the K Electric’s offer reasonable expressing its satisfaction and advised Umer’s father to seriously consider it so that immediate care is extended to the child.

However, until the Tuesday hearing, the father of the boy, Muhammad Arif, remained dissatisfied with the Senate Committee’s recommendations, and said that he will seek consultation of his family and will report to the committee afterwards.

Moreover, the committee also took notice of a similar incident that occurred in the jurisdiction of Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) wherein eight-year-old boy Faiz Muhammad from district Jafarabad, Balochistan, touched low hanging power lines and lost his hand on 31 August.

The child is in under treatment currently at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in absence of reasonable health facilities in his native area. The committee will formally serve notice to QESCO chief to investigate the matter further.

The Karachi incident had taken place on August 24. Eight-year-old Muhammad Umar was critically injured after he touched a live wire outside his house in Ahsanabad. Eight-year-old Muhammad suffered a high voltage shock which caused severe burns on both his arms. Umer’s parents rushed the child to the hospital where the doctors informed them that both of Umar’s arms needed to be amputated.

K-Electric maintains that the cause of the incident were illegal connections, and not the KE distribution network. “With reference to the unfortunate incident in Ahsanabad, K-Electric’s sympathies are with the affected family. On humanitarian grounds, KE has already expressed its wishes to extend all possible support for the child’s medical treatment, post-treatment rehabilitation and education”, said the KE spokesperson.

He said that K-Electric would like to ensure that Umer received the medical care he needed. According to KE spokesman, KE had also initiated dialogue with a reputable institute to review the case for further treatment including artificial limbs.

“KE would like to reiterate that the incident was a consequence of the pervasive kunda wires to extract power through illegal infrastructure by some other elements where this unfortunate incident took place and the innocent child got injured.”

The spokesman said that the power utility had repeatedly disconnected this illegal network and even initiated regulatory action. “KE continues to seek strong government support and rigorous enforcement to curb this menace by ensuring that unplanned settlements, illegal networks and kundas are eliminated so that public safety is not compromised,” added the spokesperson.

Meanwhile, K-Electric’s chief executive officer Moonis Alvi also appeared before the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights on Tuesday to answer questions about electrocution incident occurred in Karachi on August 24.

Published in Daily Times, September 20^th 2018.