Despite rising incidents of gas cylinder blasts, the government has not taken preventive measures to rein in the number of incidents or provided better treatment facilities to burn victims.
The data shared by Burn Center at Pakistan Institutes of Medical Sciences (PIMS) with Pakistan Today showed that more than 9,000 patients were treated at the burn center during the last six months.
Out of the total patients, majority were victims of flame burns either caused by gas leakage or gas cylinder blasts.
Keeping in view the seriousness of the issue, Asim Riaz, a senior research engineer at Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan (HDIP) wrote a letter to OGRA chairperson in which he stated that OGRA’s incompetence is partly responsible for deaths in CNG and LPG sector.
The letter, available with Pakistan Today, reads that corroded petrol tanks and improvised petrol fuel system were results of OGRA policies in CNG sector which resulted in deaths of hundreds of people. He said that the HDIP pointed out the matter in many reports but OGRA turned a deaf ear to it.
“Petrol tanks of most of the public service vans were rusted as drivers run the vehicle only on CNG due to price differential; the drivers are forced to run the vehicle on petrol on or two days a week,” the letter reads.
It was stated that drivers/owners made highly unsafe alternations and were running the vehicles with petrol stored in un-capped plastic cans placed in passengers’ compartment. The fuel from can to the engine is supplied through ordinary plastic pipes and this improvisation was result of almost all the accidents [I] inspected.
“OGRA policies made in air conditioned rooms with no knowledge of ground realities by clerical engineers were unable to safely regulate CNG sector and is doing the same with LPG sector; I cannot describe you what I have seen I have no words, charred bodies of dead schools children and interviewed severely burnt children unlike your staff,” the letter reads.
HDIP suggested that OGRA is evaluating LPG cylinder on NFPA 58 which is not relevant standard, besides recommending ISO 11119-3: Part 3 EN 14427 for Composite Cylinders, the letter reads.
It implies that OGRA together with half a dozen of its private 3rd parties’ inspectors do not even know the basic LPG equipment standards and international quality control standards, he lamented.
Talking to Pakistan Today, Chairman of LPG Distributors Association Pakistan, Irfan Khokhar said that on average two gas cylinder blasts occurred daily, in which 4 to 5 people loss their life; however no action has been taken against the responsible because of absence of legislation in this regard, as a person got bail within ten minutes even if over 20 people died in the blast.
Khokhar said that he had been struggling for last 10 years and wrote several letters to concerned authorities in order to find out some solution to the very serious issue, but no one paid heed to the issue.
The chairman said that the association provided a list of 750 companies to the OGRA in 2006 for inspection of which only four companies were registered.
“The authorities that issued licenses to the companies are responsible to take punitive actions against the companies, manufacturing poor quality cylinders,” he maintained.
The chairman claimed that the quality cylinders never exploded; hence legislation should be made to punish who compromise on the internationally set standard.
Irfan regretted that the authority instead of giving serious consideration to fix the problems indulged in blame game and resorted to level baseless allegations against him.
Dr Isaac Ashir, PIMS Burn Center spokesperson, said that most of the burn patients were closed space flame burns, inhalational injury and carbon monoxide poisoning.
He said that in gas blast occurred in closed spaces, victims inhaled too much gas that reduced their survival chances considerably when the patients are reached to the hospital.
Isaac said that the 20-bed state-of-the-art burn center was built for the burn victims from Islamabad and Rawalpindi; however all the patients not be accommodated due to non-availability space that is why they have to deny admission to serious burn patients on occassions.
When this scribe contacted, Imran Ghaznavi, Spokesperson OGRA said that OGRA is not oblivious to its responsibility and is taking proper action against those companies involved in manufacturing substandard gas cylinders.
He said that cylinder blasts did not occur because of poor quality but due to valve leakage, which is human error, as no cylinder ever exploded at the filling plants.
He said that all the companies registered with OGRA are manufacturing standard and quality cylinders and the Punjab government and DCOs are taking actions against those companies making poor quality cylinders and a number of people have been rounded up so far.
To a question, Imran said that OGRA has no authority to take direct action but they wrote to chief secretaries of all provinces against those companies manufacturing substandard cylinders.
About Riaz’s letter, he said that OGRA has written a four-page letter to HDIP against him and his department would take action against him.
Besides, he said that the letter was written to the cabinet secretary so he could not write letter on his official capacity.
He said that they could only take action against registered companies and could cancel their licenses.
He said that the authority even wrote to the PEMRA for spreading awareness campaign on how gas cylinders could be used.
