Minor girl dies after falling into open manhole in Baldia Town

In a heart-wrenching incident, a four-year-old girl lost her life on Thursday after falling into an open manhole in Baldia Town. The minor girl, Umrah Baloch, son of Basit, was playing near her residence in the Mawach Goth area in Baldia Town when she fell into the manhole. Witnesses said the girl slipped while playing and fell into the uncovered manhole.

People present at the scene immediately rushed to her aid upon hearing her cries. They took her out from the manhole and shifted her to the Civil Hospital, Karachi, where doctors pronounced her dead.

The family and people of the area staged a protest against the incident and blamed the authorities for the incident. They said the manholes in the entire locality were uncovered and the lives of people were at risk.

A police team also visited the­ area after the incident and initiated an investigation to ascertain the circumstances surrounding the uncovered manhole. No case had been registered till the filing of this news story.

This was the second incident of a child’s death after falling into a sewer to have occurred in Karachi in August. In the earlier incident, a child watching a rally in Memon Goth on Independence Day fell into an open sewer and died.

The two-and-a-year-old boy, Noman Abro, stood on a road to watch the rally celebrating Independence Day and fell into the drain as he started walking with the rally participants. When he was pulled out of the sewer, he had passed away.

Following the incident, Karachi Deputy Mayor Salman Abdullah Murad had reached Jamot Para in Murad Memon Goth, met the parents of the boy and expressed grief over the minor’s death.

MQM-P’s response

Reacting to the girl’s death on Thursday, a spokesperson for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) said that the open manholes in the city were becoming a cause of death for innocent children.

In a statement issued, the party spokesperson said that initially, the Sindh government held municipal powers for 15 years, which turned Karachi into ruins, and now, the local government of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was also failing miserably to provide facilities to the people.

The MQM-P blamed the girl’s death on what it said the negligence of the PPP's biased mayor. The party called for holding all the people responsible for the open manhole, including the mayor, accountable.

The spokesperson demanded that the caretaker chief minister of Sindh, local government minister and governor take notice of such incidents and provide justice to the people of Karachi.