SHC seeks comments on plea for judicial commission

Karachi
The Sindh High Court directed federal and provincial law officers on Monday to file comments on a petition seeking the constitution of a judicial commission to fix responsibility for the death of more than 1,000 citizens in a deadly heatwave in June.
The directive came during the hearing of the petition filed by Shahzad Roy and social welfare organizations.
The petitioners have submitted that over 1,000 persons were killed and some 40,000 suffered heatstroke in the heatwave, but the federal and provincial governments failed to understand the seriousness of climate change despite several climate change warnings.
They say the federal and provincial governments did not declare a state of emergency until June 23 when 426 people had died.
According to the petitioners, the power utility of Karachi failed to provide an uninterrupted power supply that could have eased the suffering of citizens.
The court was requested to constitute a judicial commission comprising a retired judge of the high court or the Supreme Court to ascertain reasons for the tragedy and fix responsibility on government functionaries for their failure in taking preventive measures to prevent deaths.
Besides, the petitioners have demanded that the role of the K-Electric (KE) be examined as it failed to provide an uninterrupted supply of power to citizens.
A division bench headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah directed the federal and provincial law officers to file comments, and adjourned the hearing for October 27.
The KE, however, submitted in its comments that it could not be blamed for the death of over 1,000 citizens in the heatwave as it did utmost to ensure the provision of electricity in the city.
It said there was no communication from any government authority or department giving any forewarning as to the intensity of the heatwave, besides the majority of those who passed away were homeless people.
The KE added that it had not been established that there was a direct correlation between the loadshedding and the deaths. “Had this been the case, in those areas (such as Sibi and Larkana) where the loadshedding regimes are much higher (in some areas 18 hours) and the temperature reached 49 degrees Centigrade there would have been more deaths, which is clearly not the case.”
The KE insisted that it reduced loadshedding during the peak of the heatwave since the beginning of Ramazan, while the maximum loadshedding prior to the month was 7.5 hours (in some areas). This was reduced to 4 hours to 4.5 hours.
The power utility claimed that 143 hospitals were exempted from outages throughout the city, and that in many areas the health facilities had been granted rebates on their electricity bills from 50 percent to 100 percent since 2014 as part of the KE’s CSR policy for supporting community health and public welfare.
It was submitted that due to the investment made by the KE and the other improvements, about 60 of the city was free/exempt from loadshedding, while for the remaining 40 percent ordinarily there were three different loadshedding regimes of three hours, six hours and 7.5 hours.
The KE denied that there was any discrimination against the petitioners or any segment of society as the same policy of segmented loadshedding was being practised in other parts of the country, including Lahore.