Karachi, December 7 — The City Council’s Water and Sewerage Committee has rejected inquiry reports submitted by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC) and TransKarachi after three-year-old Ibrahim fell into an uncovered manhole near NIPA and died earlier this week.
Led by Opposition Leader Advocate Saifuddin, the committee condemned senior municipal officials for a pattern of what it called irresponsibility and indifference. Representatives of TransKarachi and KWSC attended the meeting, but the municipal commissioner, who had been summoned, neither appeared nor sent a delegate. The absence drew sharp criticism from members.
After inspecting the site, Advocate Saifuddin said the commissioner’s failure to attend demonstrated a clear lack of seriousness on the part of the KMC administration and the mayor’s office. He accused departmental officials of trying to shift blame during the session instead of accepting responsibility for the fatal oversight.
The committee dismissed KWSC’s submission, which had claimed the stormwater drain fell outside its jurisdiction, calling the report “incomplete, evasive, and unsatisfactory.” Members said such bureaucratic deflection exacerbates Karachi’s long-running governance problems.
Saifuddin noted that a few officials had been suspended but said the moves appeared to be more of a public relations gesture than a genuine attempt to address systemic failures. “Four days have passed since the child’s death, yet the authorities remain unclear about who is responsible for leaving the manhole uncovered,” he said.
The committee demanded an independent, transparent inquiry and urgent reforms to the city’s municipal structure to ensure accountability and prevent similar tragedies in Karachi’s chronically mismanaged civic landscape, according to Dawn/ANI.
