KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmaker Dr Seema Zia will present an Emergency Service Bill in the Sindh Assembly on Monday.
The Bill is named the 10-year-old Amal Umer who lost her life after she was hit by a stray bullet during a police encounter in Karachi’s Akhtar Colony area on the eve of Independence Day.
In a tweet, President Arif Alvi said he had requested Zia to rename the ‘Sindh Emergency Service Bill’ in Amal’s memory.
“After my visit to Amal’s house for condolence, @DrSeemaSZia MPA informed me that she was going to move a bill she had prepared called the ‘Sindh Emergency Service Bill’.”
On my request, she gladly named it the ‘Sindh Amal Emergency Service Bill’ in her memory. Amal will save lives,” the President tweeted.
“I cannot even imagine sharing the sorrow of Amal’s family. May Allah give them the strength to bear this loss with fortitude. However, I have requested some MPAs to see why hospitals do not take care of trauma victims & turn them away. Amal is gone but we can save many other lives,” he further tweeted.
Amal’s aggrieved parents have stressed that they want to ensure other residents of the city do not have to face the situation they had undergone.
“We don’t want any compensation for our daughter’s death. We just want to make sure that what we faced does not happen with anyone else,” Amal’s mother Beenish told the media.
The deceased child’s father Umer had said: “Our daughter will not come back to life but we want the problems [that led to her death] to be eradicated. We want laws to be passed to solve the issues, be them at the police’s end or the hospitals.”
“We shouldn’t address things when a tragedy occurs, even though we have already faced this tragedy,” Amal’s father added.
Earlier on September 27, a former Sindh High Court (SHC) judge was tasked to head the committee formed by the apex court to probe the death of 10-year-old Amal Umer, who lost her life after being hit by a stray bullet on the eve of Independence Day.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar heard the case where an NMC representative and Amal’s parents — Umer and Beenish — were present.
As the hearing went underway, CJP Nisar picked Justice (r) Arif Khilji to lead the probe as the provincial advocate general informed the Supreme Court that measures have been taken for the formation of the committee.
The court was also informed that the procedure of private hospitals when dealing with emergency cases needs to reassessed and added that Sindh’s inspector general of police has also taken steps to address the issue.
During the hearing, the CJP said, “There should be a trauma centre in all government and private hospitals,” adding that “the hospital did not even provide adequate first aid. Why should we not investigate the hospital? Where is the owner of the hospital?”
On September 26, Karachi’s city court had transferred the case of 10-year-old Amal Umer to an anti-terrorism court (ATC), stating that the case falls within the ambits of Anti-Terrorism Act.
The judicial magistrate remarked that fear had spread in the aftermath of the incident.
The police arrested Khalid, the suspect in the case and said his accomplice was killed during the encounter. The ATC has remanded the suspect to police custody for five days.
He had confessed to seven other cases of robbery.
Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar had taken a suo moto notice of Amal’s death after her parents alleged that a private hospital had refused to provide treatment to the injured.