Heatwave crisis kills 180
KARACHI: An intense heatwave over three days has killed more than 180 people in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, officials said yesterday, leading authorities to declare an emergency as the electricity grid crashed and bodies stacked up in the morgues.
The outages hit large portions of Pakistan’s financial heart of Karachi, home to 20 million people, where residents lit bonfires in protest.
Unclaimed bodies were being rapidly buried to create space in morgues, said Anwar Kazmi, a senior official of the charitable Edhi Foundation.
“We are urging people to bury their dead at the earliest in view of the current heatwave and poor power situation,” he said.
“We have not run out of capacity at the morgue, but buried 30 unclaimed bodies this morning to create more space.”
At least 180 people died of heat-related problems since Friday night, said Sabir Memon, Sindh province’s additional secretary for the health ministry.
Leave for all medical staff had been cancelled and authorities were distributing extra drips and rehydration salts to hospitals, he said. Casualties were still being tallied.
“Hundreds of patients suffering from the heatwave are being treated at government hospitals,” said Saeed Mangnejo, the provincial health secretary.
Temperatures soared between 43ºC and 44ºC at the weekend, coinciding with a surge of demand for power as Muslim families observed the month of Ramadaan.
Both the federal government and K-Electric, the private company that supplies Karachi with power, had promised there would be no outages during the time when families gathered to break their fast at sunset.
But power cuts left many families without water, airconditioning, fans and light.
Officials from K-Electric said the heatwave had triggered unprecedented demand, and that many faults were caused by illegal hook-ups overloading power lines.
Teams trying to fix the faults had been attacked and employees badly beaten, said spokesperson Taha Siddiqui.
Corruption and mismanagement mean most of Pakistan usually suffers at least eight hours of daily power cuts. Those in poorer areas are hit even harder.
The cash-strapped government sells power for less than the cost of production, but its late payments to suppliers cause a chronic shortage.
Many wealthy or influential families and factory owners exacerbate the problem by refusing to pay their bills or cutting deals with corrupt power officials.