The employees of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Karachi airport fire department have decided to launch a protest campaign against the reappointment of Ishtiaq Soomro as the fire and safety general manager.
Soomro was removed from office after the Gakhar Plaza tragedy in 2008. Later, he was appointed as the chief fire officer at the Allama Iqbal International Airport. He was also appointed the head of inquiry committee to probe the death of two CAA fire-fighters in the Gakhar Plaza blaze.
The CAA has issued Ishtiaq Soomro reappointment orders, but he has not assumed charge of the office yet.
The fire department employees of the CAA alleged that Soomro illegally favoured his batch-mate Anwar Ahmed Ghauri, the chief fire officer at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad.
They alleged that Soomro and Ghauri were appointed in the CAA with the help of their influential friends in 1983 despite the fact that both men had failed to pass the air traffic control officer test, the post for which they had applied, and were later sent to the fire section.
They alleged that Ghauri forcibly sent two fire-fighters of the CAA, Abid Ali and Rizwan-ul Haq, into Gakhar Plaza, the ramshackle building which was engulfed by fire, without paying heed to the warning of senior aerodrome that the building can collapse anytime, causing the two men’s death.
They said that Soomro was the CAA fire and safety general manager at that time. First he was reluctant to form a committee to probe the death of the two fire-fighters to save his friend Ghauri. When a committee was finally formed in February 2011, Soomro, as its head, made a decision in favour of Ghauri.
