FIRSTLY, enquiries reveal that there is not one single qualified seismologist either practising or teaching in any of the many universities of Pakistan which are attempting to educate just a few of the 160 millions who inhabit this country (incidentally, the present national birthrate as calculated and known to our enlightened moderates is approximately 10 per minute).

The hope is that I am wrong on the seismologist front and if there is any reader of this well read newspaper of record who can contradict my finding, it would bring great relief and much joy.

A front page first lead story in the national press on October 20, under the main headline ‘Margalla Towers to be demolished’ and sub-headline ‘FRC says towers unsafe — SC to hear residents’ plea on Oct 25th’, tells us : “Federal Relief Commissioner (FRC) Major-General Farooq Ahmed Khan wrote in a brief note for the media on Wednesday that the three towers had been declared unsafe and would be demolished. However, addressing reporters, the commissioner did not read out the sentence about the towers’ demolition.”

Why did the relief commissioner refrain from reading it out, loud and clear. Was this not a serious lapse? Should he not warn the survivors? Is the general fit to hold this job?

The news item continued : “Another relief official told the press that the Capital Development Authority had found the buildings unsafe and decided to demolish them. One of the four apartment towers was the only building in Islamabad to collapse in the October 8 earthquake, claiming 68 lives.” (The number of dead is now 75.)

On the 21st another front-page news item under the headline ‘Tower tragedy result of criminal act’ gives a listing of the detailed views of various legal experts, the unanimous opinion of all being that the builders and concerned CDA officials concerned were guilty of a criminal act, in fact, murder.

A columnist’s task is to inform, educate and entertain his or her readers. This paper does its duty as far as the first two factors are concerned. For the frightened Karachi reader (a flatterer who calls me Zola — neither am I another Z nor is this paper another L’Aurore) who now realizes that he lives in a ‘regularized’ high-rise building, and the thousands of other Karachi dwellers in the same predicament, let me now inform them how their lives have been and remain endangered. Corruption, in all areas, including construction and development, during the first three decades of Pakistan’s life remained low key, as it always had been.

But come the era of Ziaul Haq in Pakistan and side by side with the rise of religiosity corruption rose alarmingly. In Karachi, after the departure of Ahmed Ali from the Karachi Development Authority and the arrival of his successor (August 25, 1980, to July 14 1988 when he was summarily sacked by the governor of Sindh, General Rahimuddin)), corruption in the field of building and development became almost official. Unauthorized high-rises mushroomed all over the city, no area was spared, and in complete violation of all laws, the officials of the KDA assumed the power to ‘regularize’ irregular buildings by charging a fee, some of which landed in the national exchequer and most of which dropped into the pockets of the top KDA officials. The legacy remains.

Buildings which do not comply with the relevant laws, such as they are, are naturally unsafe buildings and hazardous to life and limb. To ‘regularize’ such buildings falls within the ambit of a criminal act.

We move to 1998, when the Karachi Building Control Authority inserted in the national press a ‘public notice/warning’, which listed 26 high-rise buildings on Shahrea Faisal and cautioned the general public: ‘The unauthorized construction is potentially dangerous as they are being built without an approved plan, have not been properly supervized by a KBCA licensed architect/engineer. They are being constructed in violation of the earthquake resistance design.’ This strange announcement had little effect. The hazardous situation remains as it was.

After the 1999 and 2001 earthquakes in Turkey and Gujarat, respectively, some concerned citizens of Karachi, led by the NGO Shehri, made efforts to shake up the local administration and make them realize that their duty was to protect the lives and properties of the residents of the city. Our rather humdrum governor of the day, Mohammadmian Soomro (who has moved up and away and acts as president of the republic when he is not presiding over a dormant Senate), did nothing until awakened by the then federal finance minister, Shaukat Aziz, who prodded him into issuing a ‘regularization’ ordinance (December 2001) which merely compounded an already existing criminal offence.

In March 2002, Governor Soomro promulgated an amnesty ordinance through which some 5,000 illegal buildings of Karachi were to be ‘regularized’ over the next two years. (Previous ‘regularizations’ had never received the cover of law.) In 2004, Nazim Naimatullah Khan amended the building regulations which allowed the ‘regularization’ of even more potentially dangerous buildings. The KBCA has not and will not publicize the full list of the criminally ‘regularized’ buildings. One official procedure established to verify the seismic safety of ‘regularized’ buildings: ‘In case the owner/builder violated the height limit/constructed extra floors beyond approved building plan, and structure of special nature, the detailed calculations and drawings of existing structure be submitted through structural engineer, soil consultant, duly vetted by proof engineer regarding soundness and stability. Whereas in case of coastal area, building with (ground + 2) floors and above, the same procedure be adopted through proof engineer registered with KBCA.’

Now, what are these engineers registered with the KBCA through whom thousands of buildings have been ‘regularized’ on the strength of a paper certificate without any examination in detail of the structural stability or seismic viability of the unauthorized buildings? They are ‘brief-case’ engineers and architects who operate out of satchels with a stamp/seal, stamp-pad, and signature pen. They have no well staffed offices, nor do they hire other engineers or architects. They design, engineer, draft, check, inspect, verify and supervize thousands of construction projects. Investigations into KBCA processing will show that the multitude of ‘regularizations’ carried out over the past three years are based on the safety certification of a handful of ‘brief-case’ architects and engineers.

When and if these ‘regularized’ structures collapse in a moderate earthquake which may strike Karachi, the government and administration will absolve themselves of all responsibility and lay the blame at the feet of the certifying ‘brief-case’ engineers.

All citizens who live in these ‘regularized’ buildings must be warned that they are in danger, real danger. Thank Islamabad, and think Azad Kashmir. It may be impossible to demolish all these dangerous structures, which must stand as monuments to this city’s corruption, or to recover any money from the building mafia and those they have bought and bribed, but it is criminal to ‘regularize’ them. An unsafe building cannot be signed into safety.

Those who have been duped will just have to continue their precarious existence, with the full knowledge that they have been betrayed by the authorities who neither take steps to prosecute the corrupt building mafia and their KBCA partners in crime nor even to prevent them from continuing on their merry way.

E-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk