Unanswered Questions: Baldia Town Garment Factory Fire Tragedy, Karachi, Pakistan. On Sept.

11th 2012, a fire swept through a garment factory in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, killing 289 and injuring dozens, all the victims were employees of the factory. The factory was located in Pakistans biggest industrial area SITE (Sindh Industrial Trading Estate) but it took fire fighters hours to arrive at the scene and they couldnt do much as the water hydrants were shut down by the water board in that entire area on that ill fated day. After weeks of investigation, no one from the civic authorities has taken responsibilities however the owners of the factory are under arrest to show the public that civilian authorities are serious about holding someone responsible for this accident. Attached are few unanswered questions to the authorities that 1000s of families affected by this huge tragedy are asking but no one has come forward to answer If someone in Pakistan generates Rs. 2 Billion in an annual export revenue, pays over Rs. 20 Million in annual taxes, and if his factory faces some sort of accident, does that mean he should be implicated under section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan penal code and the person himself be sent to jail? If someone, who for the past 20 years has provided direct employment to 1,200 workers (almost 1000 families) and indirect employment to around 12,000 others. If his factory faces some sort of disaster, does that mean his gatekeeper, accountant, and senior staff be sent to jail as well? Does anyone benefits from the fact that the owners are now in jail? Except for the real culprits; the so called incompetent authorities who should have been responsible to emergencies such as this. With the owners in jail what will happen to the compensation that was supposed to given to the heirs of the deceased workers? What about other 900 workers who survived this disaster? With the owners in jail, the rehabilitation of the factory is not possible, so who will provide those 900 families with a source of income? The owners who were well educated (a mechanical engineer and a medical doctor) expanded their fathers business in the last 20 years, increasing its productivity from 50

machines to around 700, en route to even further expansion when the disaster struck and all their hard work evaporated in smoke with their best resources (employees, some of these loyal workers with them for over a decade) in matter of just few hours. As if all these losses werent enough that The bank accounts of the owners are frozen. The owners are stripped of their basic rights. Their factory has been sealed and they are not allowed to visit their own factory. A trading business worth millions of rupees is placed under police control. The owners to be labeled as criminals and sent off to jail. What sort of image have we presented to the world, that if a factory in Pakistan faces a disaster, the factory will be sealed and the owners will be sent to jail. What about the export orders given to this factory, who will fulfill their commitment to the respective buyers? Will the buyers remain silent over non-completion of these orders? What answers will they give to the stores they were supposed to supply? Will this give an incentive to foreign businessmen to come and invest in Pakistan and foreign companies to associate themselves with Pakistani businesses? What will happen to the suppliers and vendors of this factory? The payments that the vendors were supposed to collect from the factory owners? Does sending the owners in jail means that the vendors will receive their payment? If the vendors dont receive payment, how will they in turn pay their workers and fulfill their liabilities? Just imagine, how many different people and vendors have suffered by sending the owners to jail? Even if the owners wish to compensate their workers today, they cannot, as they are in jail. Will the government compensate all the workers? If yes, then when? Whereas the owners themselves have said that they are willing to compensate each and every worker. Till today has the government or any of its institution such as Social Security, EOB and the Labor Department ever compensated anyone of the workers heirs? While for the past 20 years the factory owners have paid a certain amount each month to these institutions under the name of workers compensation, which must have accumulated to several million rupees today? Was it due to media frenzy that the owners were quickly regarded as criminals?

Dont we know what type of people are made anchor/host? Dont they blackmail others from their position of power to increase the ratings? Even The Chief Justice of Pakistan has been a victim of this onslaught. Isnt the media also controlled by political parties and special interest groups? In their rush to judgment, police didnt even think twice before filing a case under section 302, which suggests that the factory owners deliberately torched their own factory. The police didnt even consider simple common sense questions as The factory owners didnt transfer their hard earned millions to an offshore account? They would have shifted their family somewhere abroad? But these God fearing and law abiding citizens did no such thing, in spite of this a case was filed under section 302 and 322 against them. Why was this so? This incident occurred on the 11th of September and on the same day a shoe factory in Lahore caught fire with around 30 fatalities. Why wasnt an FIR filed under section 302 against them? On 12th September another garment factory caught fire in SITE area Karachi. On 13th September a towel factory caught fire in Karachi. Another factories caught the fire on the 14th and 15th of September. A few days later an oil factory caught fire in Shershah district which took 14 hours to extinguish. Has anyone given it a thought that why in the two week span a factory was on fire every day? And even to this day, there continues to be these unusual fires all across Karachi.

Are there enough fire brigades with adequate supplies to deal with these fires? And if God forbid there are other fire incidents with fatalities, will all the owners be sent to jail? Is it the job of these factory owners to worry about fire or the civil services? The city does not have enough firefighting equipment to complement the thousands of factories set up in Karachi; this is evident from the fact that the fire department has only two working snorkels at its disposal, what do you think will happen if there are multiple fires light up simultaneously? In this situation the government ordered the FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) to conduct an inquiry into this incident and according to its initial report, the responsible

parties include the factory owners and the relevant civic authorities, with the owners fault being that the mezzanine and second floor was built in an illegal fashion. Will the FIA be answerable about the query that How does an illegal construction show that the factory fire resulted as a fault of the owners? And if it was a fault of the SITE authorities then will a case be filed against the SITE director of 15 years ago as the constructed building was approved some 15 years ago? In the past 15 years, has no one from the labor department or any other authority inspected the factory? Now 15 years down the road, an illegal construction should not be linked as a cause of the fire as these are two separate issues. Although the FIA report mentions that the mezzanine floor was made out of wood which caused the fire to accelerate faster but the same report failed to address the allimportant issue which is Although the fire was in the basement and ground floor, how did it manage to spread to the 2nd floor when there was no trace of fire on the 1st floor? These are several questions about the fire that are still a big mystery. The investigation into this therefore should be carried out by a fire forensic expert who will be able to determine; How did the fire manage to spread to the 2nd floor when there was no trace of fire on the 1st floor? Why hundreds of deaths from smoke inhalation happened on the first floor? Was there a separate fire on the second floor? The factorys DVR system (close circuit cameras) can easily determine who were those unknown people that entered the factory right before the fire started and came out after the fire erupted to highlight to media that the factory owners have closed the gates, whereas the factory owners were still inside the factory at that time. To hide the true facts of this huge disaster and holding the owners as solely responsible would be a huge challenge for anyone including the FIA. Despite the nearest fire station just 2km away from the factory, the first fire brigade reached more than an hour after the fire erupted while second one arrived two hours later. Should the carelessness of the fire brigade also be considered a fault of the owners?

Why all the water hydrants in SITE were closed at the time of fire? Why were these water hydrants closed? Who ordered these water hydrants to be closed? Why hasnt anyone inquired about this so far? None of the government institutions are aware of which factories are compliant with current regulations, so much so that most agencies dont even know what compliance laws they should be monitoring these factories for. A factory is under compliance if it has one gate for entry and one for emergency exit, whereas this factory had 13 doors, and each floor had an evacuation plan posted and fire extinguishers all around the factory with expiration date of April 2013. So far, over two hundred survivors have come forward to give true testimony under immunity about what went wrong during the first few hours of fire but no one is willing to talk to them. These witnesses have even come forward at various court proceedings but not a single media outlet has interviewed a single witness yet. Had the same disaster occurred anywhere else in the world, first the state would have been held responsible and the compensation would be received from the relevant government institutions, but in Pakistan, the state of affairs is opposite. First, everyone tries to save themselves by implicating someone else, sadly on this occasion the entire blame was laid on the factory owners and a case was filed under section 302 and 322 and they were made criminals by sending them off to jail. What the authorities didnt consider was Who will recover the losses incurred by the owners, amount to several billion rupees? Who will pay the vendors who were left unpaid as a result of this disaster? Who will ever want to set up industries in our country? Without a doubt these 259 deaths resulted in a major tragedy and there is no substitute for a human life but every month hundreds of people die as a result of target killing in Karachi and yet we see no government official resigning. Who is responsible for all these deaths? The Government, Police or the legal system?

Unfortunately accidents do happen and just because there are fatalities in the accident such as this fire caused possibly due to short circuit related to the rainy weather does

not necessarily mean a crime was committed as so far no one has even speculated on the motive as every crime has one. Why would anyone torch their entire lifes work at the peak of their business, resulting in their entire business gone, assets frozen, family in disarray, and they themselves suffering a huge mental trauma as their extended family of dead workers (some working alongside for over 20 years). Was this the owners fault or an ongoing effort by an ill-equipped and incompetent authorities to cover its shambles? Its ironic that Ali Enterprises was one of the very few factories in Pakistan to actually receive SA8000 certification in Aug 2012 by RINA Group (an Italian company). The SA8000 standard is one of the worlds first auditable social certification standards for decent workplaces, across all industrial sectors. This information can be verified from the following links including a variety of pictures from inside the factory showing work conditions, various exit and evacuation routes, as well as fire safety equipment, etc. http://www.rina.org/en/rina_details/ali_enterprises.aspx http://www.rina.org/_files/pdf/Rina_Details/pictures.pdf http://www.rina.org/en/Rina_Details/Ali_Enterprises_certificates.aspx http://www.rina.org/_files/pdf/Rina_Details/QandA_en.pdf