A day before the end of the holy month of Ramadhan tragedy struck the people of Ahmadpur engulfing the lives of approximately 190 people with numerous injured. It was a regular Sunday for the laborers working in the nearby factories and field when an oil truck containing 50,000 liters of petrol lost control and overturned near Punjab’s Bahawalpur district. Much of the causalities are attributed to the greed of the locals and passersby who tried to accumulate the fuel from the leaking tanker before the tanker exploded in an enormous fireball and enveloped the people along with it. Matters got worse for the rescue teams due to the lack of burn facility in the nearby area with thenearest burn center almost 150 kilometers away.
While it could be debated whether the causalities could have been reduced or not, but a holistic viewpoint is necessary to understand the complete scenario and to make future amendments to avoid such accidents. While the cheapest mode of intermodal transport is rail and is widely developed all across the world; Pakistan lacks the effort and planning to develop rail network. The Oil Marketing Companies heavily rely on the road transport for delivering fuel requirements to the Northern part of the country. The logistics of fuel transportation is done through the oil tankers which are running barrels of mass explosion with little focus on developing the pipelines and refineries for transportation from Karachi to the Northern parts of Pakistan.
According to the initial reports, the cause of the accident was tyre burst while transporting fuel from Kemari Oil Terminal (Karachi) to MachikeOil Terminal (near Sheikhupura Punjab). With the advancement in technology one can easily keep track of the air pressure in the tires and is widely used across the world but questions need to be asked why these products are not implemented in our country.The answer lies in the fact that as a nation, we still think health and safety as an unnecessary cost and often reduce budgets based on cost cutting but much more is desired from these multinational companies (MNCs).
Whether it be the 11th January fatal accident between the oil tanker and a passenger bus taking the lives of 62 people with burnt bodies only to be identified through DNA test or the recent Ahmadpur accident; much is desired in terms of health and safety from these Oil Marketing Companies who’s on ground implementation of the safety standards need much more focus and willingness. Also it poses a serious question to the planning department of the government to undertake measures that such incidents could be reduced in the future and an initiation for the underlying pipeline for the oil transport. Otherwise these accidents will be recurring and every time multinational companies will blame the local contractors for the industry’s negligence at the expense of the innocent lives.
Published in Daily Times, July 6th , 2017.