As Pakistan heat wave starts to ease, criticism mounts of slow response

Pakistan's prime minister declared a state of emergency yesterday – four days after temperatures in the southern city of Karachi rose above 110 degrees F. More than 800 people have died.

|
Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
People buy ice blocks from a vendor along a road in Karachi on Wednesday. The city is wilting in the four-day heat wave that has killed more than 750 people.

Long-awaited rains can’t come soon enough for the 20 million residents of Karachi, where a scorching four-day heat wave has killed at least 800 people.

While acknowledging that periods of extreme heat were not uncommon, Farooq Dar of the Pakistan Meteorological Department told Time that the current heat wave was “unprecedented.”

“It has never been this bad,” he said.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as temperatures rose to over 110 degrees F. (43 degrees C.). The government of Sindh Province, which includes Karachi, later declared a public holiday to encourage people to stay indoors out of the sun, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

Overwhelmed hospitals are struggling to treat a surge of casualties, and morgues are filling to capacity. Chronic shortages of water and electricity in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, have exacerbated the crisis.

To make matters worse, the heat wave has coincided with the start of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, during which millions of devout Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. For most people, that means no hydration for about 15 hours. But some senior Islamic clerics have urged those who might be at greatest risk from the heat not to fast, to give them respite from the brutal heat.

"If an expert doctor says that your life is threatened due to the heat, or some condition you may have is going to get worse because of fasting, then you can forgo the daily fast," Mufti Mohammad Naeem, head of Karachi's biggest madrassa, or Islamic school, told NBC News.

The majority of the deaths in Karachi have been among the poor and day laborers who work outdoors. Many have taken the streets in protest over the government’s slow response to the crisis. As the BBC’s Shabzeb Jillani reports:

The provincial PPP government appeared aloof and unresponsive. The federal government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif woke up to the tragic deaths on the third day.

While politicians blamed each other for not doing enough, the army – always keen to seize opportunities to demonstrate its soft power – sprang into action to set up "heat stroke relief camps".

Many in Karachi feel that had the authorities moved proactively many lives could have been saved.

The city’s residents are eagerly awaiting the pre-monsoon rains that are expected to come later this week. Meanwhile, temperatures appear to finally be dropping. They’re forecast to peak at 97 degrees F. (36 degrees C.) on Wednesday, as a relatively cool sea breeze started blowing across the city Tuesday evening.

But as Ms. Jillani points out, the improved weather won't change the chronic underlying problems this ever-growing city faces: a dysfunctional infrastructure and poor governance.

The New York Times reports that years of mismanagement of Pakistan’s national grid have led to the electricity shortages. Prime Minister Sharif promised to reduce the energy crisis when he was elected into office two years ago, but so far little has changed amid widespread finger pointing. On Wednesday, political parties running Sindh Province and the federal government blamed each other for the disaster while debating the issue in parliament.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to As Pakistan heat wave starts to ease, criticism mounts of slow response
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2015/0624/As-Pakistan-heat-wave-starts-to-ease-criticism-mounts-of-slow-response
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe