This was on the dreadful morning of 25th June, just when people were anxiously waiting for Eid celebrations, an oil tanker met a fatal accident on motorway near Bhalwalpur .The driver in order to save himself from crashing into a car, overturned it and as a result the tanker rolled off the road .This episode resulted in spillage of around 40,000 liters of petrol. To witness the episode the motorway police and the highway authority also reached timely on the scene. Within a matter of half an hour to take leverage from the situation multitudinous number of local villagers along with their family members reached the sight for collection of spilled oil. Unfortunately, while the crowd was busy collecting petrol the oil tanker exploded and within a short period of time and left the road carpeted in as many 140 dead skeletons and 100 badly burnt.
The motorway police very wittily threw all the blame on the crowd for not responding to the continuous warnings. Even from the general public there are many who wholly and solely hold the crowd responsible for carelessness. Though there are some who consider poverty and lack of awareness as concrete cause which pushed these locals to an extent where they were unable to comprehend what their participation could lead to.
In my personal opinion , I don’t think that we should put the blame entirely on the poverty stricken citizens. As these people were already living under such pathetic circumstances and such events act as their only hope for relief .Instead the national highway and motorway police should have actually taken preemptive measures when they could see the crowd multiplying .Why were not those measures taken? Were they waiting for the locals to gather at such a massive level or were they waiting for such a mishap to happen?
Secondly, the calamity took place in the area which was flooded with least educated people, the people who were not aware of how deadly such events can turn out to be. Otherwise under no circumstances would a knowledgeable person make such a horrific mistake. In my opinion, making them aware of the consequences was the direct responsibility of the government. Isn’t our government stable enough to launch such training and awareness programs to educate these amateurish classes?
Lastly, the local hospitals were not prepared to accommodate such a huge number of casualties. Many burnt victims had to be shifted to the other cities, as lack of space made it difficult to handle the rest of fatalities. The grave reality is that we belong to a nation whose history is loaded with such tragic disasters and yet we are ruled by governments who are never fully equipped and prepared to deal with such causalities. The question that arises here is when will our governments learn to value human lives? How many more years will our innocent citizens stay victims of such tragic events? Are government officials prearranged statements’ stating grieves over such incidents enough for the compensation?
