For many months, killings of residents by dumper trucks have become a routine of Karachi. With the government failing to make corrective actions and implement the traffic laws, people have resorted to take the law in their own hands. In many cases, angry people torch the heavy vehicles responsible for the fatal accidents and thrash the drivers in case they are able to catch them.
After an accident in the early hours of August 9, in which a dumper truck killed two siblings and injured their father on Rashid Minhas Road, angry mobs reacted violently and torched a total of seven dumper trucks. This triggered incendiary statements from the other side and a video widely circulated on social media showed a man warning of violence against the Muhajir community if similar incidents of setting vehicles ablaze continued.
A podcast on Off The School featuring journalists Najam Soharwardi, Ebad Ahmed and Naimat Khan discussed the issue of frequent accidents involving dumper trucks in Karachi. They also expressed concern over how such accidents and torching of vehicles had started fuelling ethnic divide between the Muhajirs and Pakhtuns in the city.
Najam remarked that it was unfortunate that road accidents have become a source of widening ethnic rifts in Karachi. He said the accident victims did not belong to a particular community. He highlighted that in one of the recent accidents, a pregnant woman became the victim, and she was a Pakhtun.
The participants agreed that it was the responsibility of the government to implement the traffic rules. Naimat highlighted that motorcyclists were the victims in most of the accidents but a large number of motorcyclists continued to blatantly violate the traffic laws.
He said if we observed how many cars and how many motorcycles violated the traffic signals, the number of motorcycles would be much higher. It seems that motorcycles have made it mandatory upon themselves never to stop at the red signal, Naimat remarked.
The participants of the podcast also highlighted that heavy vehicle drivers were also often at fault and some of them were intoxicated while they drove, which posed great danger to everyone else on the road.
On the question of fanning ethnic tensions, Naimat said some political elements wanted to leverage the situation and they believed in ‘divide and rule’. Najam also highlighted how the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan involved ethnicity while discussing the issue in the Sindh Assembly using the lingo of Maqami (locals) and Ghair-Maqami (non-locals).
On a serious note, Naimat remarked that elements that did not like the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) might also be willing to incite ethnic hatred in Karachi in order to shift the public support towards other parties. The journalist asserted that the PTI was the most popular party of Karachi during the last general elections and both the Muhajirs and Pakhtuns voted for its candidates in large numbers.