WAF condoles with families of heatwave victims

Karachi
The Women Action Forum (WAF) on Tuesday extended its heartfelt and sincere condolences to the families and friends of over 1,332 people who lost their lives due to the heat wave in Sindh during the past one week.
In a statement issued by WAF, a non-funded, street-politicking and non-hierarchical community of pro-democracy activists, the organisation noted with utmost concern that the callous attitude of the incumbent regime and climate change were two primary factors which culminated in the high death toll.
It further stated that the incumbent provincial government along with Commissioner Karachi, municipal authorities, local government departments and other concerned departments failed to deliver good governance and efficient administration to minimise the effects of natural calamities, including heat waves and floods, amongst others.
Additionally, it argued that the climate of the Indus Basin was changing and the Indus Deltaic plains were heating up due to frequent heat waves ranging from mild and moderate, to very severe in intensity.
WAF believed that it was time for all stake holders to take climate change seriously, as it was being termed the ‘ultimate threat multiplier’.
Quoting climate experts, the WAF said the recent heat wave was explained as an ‘urban heat island phenomenon’, whereby multiple concrete surfaces reflect and absorb sunlight and hot air throughout the daytime and release it slowly during the night. Climatologists believed that this could raise the 45-degree temperature to up to 50-degree heat in metropolitan areas.
The WAF observed that lack of green spaces, cutting down of trees coupled with burgeoning concrete area had turned the city into a kind of slow-cooking oven.
Over the years it had been observed that most of the green cover in Karachi was cut down for urban development. Trees were chopped down to broaden the roads, develop flyovers and under passes for security concerns or simply to place neon signs all over the city, read the statement.
The heat wave impacted the vulnerable people and underprivileged communities at a very large scale as the prime victims included homeless people, drug addicts, beggars, hawkers and manual labourers and people living in congested spaces with little or no access to water supply and prolonged load shedding; nearly 35 per cent of those who died were women, while 25 per cent were street dwellers.
The statement further maintained that extreme poverty, bad urban infrastructure, poor development and poor governance compounded the climate crises exponentially in the city.