ISLAMABAD: Families who lost their loved ones in the collapse of one of the Margalla Towers during the 2005 earthquake gathered at the site on the 13th anniversary of the incident.

Margalla Towers was one of the capital’s first high rise residential buildings. It collapsed during the 2005 earthquake which occurred at 8:52am, killing over 70 people.

The earthquake hit the north west of the country as well as Azad Kashmir, killing more than 70,000 people and injuring 100,000.

Many countries came to help, with Cuba being one of the most prominent. Cuba sent 240 tons of medicines, equipment and hospital supplies, hundreds of doctors, nurses and paramedics and set up 32 field hospitals. Cuba also gifted 1,000 fully funded scholarships to medical students, who have since graduated and returned to Pakistan.

One of the survivors of the Margalla Towers incident, Iftikhar Chaudhry told Dawn that till date, responsibility for the collapse of the tower has not been fixed.

“Just after the incident, the then prime minister Shaukat Aziz constituted an inquiry committee to find why the tower had collapsed,” he said.

He said the inquiry committee submitted a 1,600 page report which was not made public and responsibility was not fixed.

“The person who made the towers was also compensated as he owns apartments in the building,” he said, adding that there is a history of not making such reports public in the country which is why such incidents are not stopped from happening in the future.

“We request the chief justice and prime minister to play their role in making the report public, he said.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2018