Mulk takes oath as caretaker premier
AS KARACHI IS SCORCHED BY A HEATWAVE, RESIDENTS AND THE ADMINISTRATION ARE TRYING TO COPE THE BEST THEY CAN Former chief justice to hold office till outcome of July 25 elections
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Heatwaves have become common this time of year in Karachi, Pakistan’s sprawling seaside port city. Still, the latest one caught its 20 million residents off guard.
It was all anyone here could talk about last week as people moved lethargically about their days, helpless to avoid temperatures that sometimes soared to 43.3 degree Celsius, leaving people in a fever-like haze, even in the shade.
The heat, radiating from roads and cement buildings well into the night, was made worse by the city’s notorious lack of green space. Shops and households that can afford airconditioners cranked them up, but most people were left with few options: wet washcloths and electric fans, and those only for the few hours when the power was on.
The streets, normally congested with traffic, became eerily empty around noon. The traffic police listlessly motioned at cars from under umbrellas as people made their way indoors or hid for a few moments in the shadow of one of the city’s many concrete towers — anywhere that could provide some respite.
The heat spiked on May 18, a day after the beginning of Ramadan. The timing exacerbated the effects of the brutal temperatures.
The death toll has reached 65, according to Faisal Edhi, the head of the Edhi Foundation, a charity that operates Karachi’s biggest fleet of ambulances and its central morgue. Government officials dispute that figure.
After four days, the extreme heat subsided — to a relatively cooling average of 32.8C. But it’s expected to be over 43C again.
One of those who lost their lives was 30-year-old Tayyiba Feroz. When she went to cook food for her family on the evening of May 20, she was struggling with the heat but still felt fine, said her husband, Shaikh Mohammad Shiraz. She wasn’t fasting because she was pregnant, and pregnant women are exempt from the religious obligation. The power goes out about six hours a day in their neighbourhood, in one of the city’s more crowded northern slums, so residents plan their days around the times it comes on. Her husband said she had insisted on cooking dinner that night, worried that she wouldn’t be able to feed the family when the power would inevitably fail again.
He said she had been laughing with their threeyear-old son before heading to the stove to prepare dinner. Minutes later, she collapsed and died.
Shiraz, arranging traditional Quranic recitations a week later, seemed unable to process her sudden demise.
He suspects that the heat from the stove compounded her dehydration.
And he is wracked with guilt because, he said, he knows well the signs of heat stroke from his job as an ambulance driver for the Edhi Foundation. ■
Shiraz, holding his son in his lap, said that in the past three years he had seen at least two dozen people die of heat stroke, most of them in June 2015, when Karachi suffered through one of the deadliest heatwaves in history. More than 1,000 people died in two weeks then, overwhelming hospitals and emergency responders.
“I saw men fall dead in the street,” he said. “We’d have people die in the back of our ambulances. It was non-stop.”
Edhi, whose family began the Edhi Foundation, said he believed the true number of casualties was underreported in 2015 and continues to be underreported.
Dr Seemin Jamali, executive director of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, one of the biggest hospitals in Karachi, said the city had learnt from the experiences of 2015. “We’re absolutely more in control of the situation,” she said.
Heatwaves have been more frequent in Karachi since that time, but the recent one is the worst since then. ■
Pakistan’s former chief justice Nasir-ul-Mulk took oath as country’s caretaker prime minister yesterday to oversee and ensure free, fair and transparent elections on July 25.
The oath was administered to the caretaker prime minister by President Mamnoon Hussain at a ceremony held at the Aiwan-e-Sadr (President House) in Islamabad. Following the ceremony, Justice Mulk was presented a guard of honour by the armed forces.
Mulk was jointly nominated as the caretaker prime minister by the outgoing leader of the opposition in National Assembly Khurshid Shah and the outgoing prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
Speaking to the media after the oath-taking ceremony, the interim premier said holding free and fair elections will be his priority. Mulk also said he would make sure that the elections will be held on time and in a transparent manner. “We will fulfil the duty we have been entrusted with,” he said.
Mulk will hold the office of the caretaker prime minister for two-month period till the outcome of general elections on July 25.
Nasir-ul-Mulk, 68, hails from Mingora city of northwestern Swat district, a scenic touristic spot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. He completed his degree of bar-at-law from Inner Temple London in 1977.
Mulk, who has been appointed the country’s seventh caretaker prime minister, has previously served as 22nd Chief Justice of Pakistan from 2014-15. During his short tenure as the chief justice, he gave four historic judgements to strengthen the democratic process.
Mulk who has also rendered services as the acting Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan in 2014, holds a reputation for being politically neutral. Mulk is one of the seven judges who signed an application on November 3, 2007, restraining the thenPervez Musharraf government to impose martial law in Pakistan.