A six-year-old girl passed away after she fell into an uncovered manhole in Hyderabad’s Paretabad on Sunday, according to the police.
Bushra left her house to buy some snacks for herself from a nearby shop when she fell, her grandfather said. “We waited for help from the police and rescue officials but none arrived.”
After waiting for over five hours the neighbours retrieved her from the gutter themselves. However, she couldn’t sustain the injuries and passed away on the way to the hospital.
They said that the chairman of the union council lived in the same area but never took any action to cover the manholes on the street. “Even after the incident, the manhole was not closed,” a neighbour said.
The holes were covered a day after the incident. “They have just kept a wooden plank on top of them, which does not reduce the danger manholes pose,” he added.
Last month, two sanitary workers passed away while cleaning manholes in the same area. No permanent action, however, has been taken by the management so far, the residents of the area said.
Human rights activist Marvi Awan, who hails from the same area, says that residents and activists have written to the authorities multiple times but never got a satisfactory response from them.
“Requests and applications keep piling up but no action is ever taken,” she said on SAMAA TV’s programme Naya Din. Awan said that she blames the government for the death of the six-year-old.
“The question here is where do the covers of these manholes go because the government always says that they put the covers on but they are stolen by people,” she pointed out.
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