KARACHI: The Sindh government has suspended several Local Government Department officials following a three-year-old's death after slipping into an open manhole in Karachi's Gulshan-e-Iqbal area.
The development comes shortly after Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah chaired a meeting on the incident, which took place near the Nipa flyover.
Copies of the suspension notifications, available with Geo News, showed the suspended officials include Imran Ahmed Rajput, senior director of municipal services at the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, and Rashid Fayyaz, assistant executive engineer at the Town Municipal Corporation, Gulshan-e-Iqbal.
Similarly, the executive engineer of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, Waqar Ahmed, has been suspended.
Other suspended officials include Gulshan-e-Iqbal Assistant Commissioner Aamir Ali Shah and Gulshan-e-Iqbal Mukhtiarkar Salman Farsi.
The suspensions follow widespread social media criticism, with users criticising the provincial government for lapses in governance.
Tragedy struck the city on Sunday night when the boy, the only child of his parents, fell into an uncovered manhole that had reportedly been without a lid for several days.
People pooled money to bring in machinery themselves in a desperate bid to rescue the child. However, he was found 14 hours later — on Monday morning — with eyewitnesses saying state machinery arrived only after hours of delay.
Meanwhile, Karachi police have formed a three-member inquiry committee to probe the incident.
The committee, constituted under the Karachi police chief Javed Alam Odho, includes Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) East DIG Admin Ahmed Nawaz Cheema, and SSP Investigation Central Anum Tajammul.
According to police, the body will determine responsibility for the incident and submit its report to the Karachi police chief upon completion of the inquiry.
As part of the investigation, the SSP investigation central visited the residence of the deceased child. A police delegation met the bereaved family and began recording their statements.
Responding to an investigation report issued by KMC, the BRT project issued a clarification, saying that the site of the incident is significantly distant from ongoing construction works, and there were no excavation or construction activities near or at the drain.
The project's management stressed that the BRT project is not responsible for the maintenance or repair of the drainage or sewerage infrastructure at the site.
The statement further clarified that no civil works related to the BRT project were being carried out in the vicinity. All ongoing BRT works have been initiated only after obtaining necessary approvals and NOCs from relevant authorities.
Any excavation that had been conducted nearby and subsequently closed was approximately 300 meters away from the location of the incident, the statement added.
The KMC, in its investigation report, held the Red Line BRT project and the department store administration responsible for the tragedy.
"The ongoing BRT construction work at the location is a significant contributing factor based on reports from concerned inspectors and area residents."
"The BRT construction has resulted in severe damage and disruption of the entire drainage system which runs from Nipa towards Aziz Bhatti Park," reads the KMC report sent to the local government secretary.
