THERE are days when I consider giving up writing about Pakistan. Meaningful dialogue has surrendered to hostility, disagreement to tribal loyalties and reason to slogans. Powerful groups tighten their hold on institutions and resources while ordinary people argue over whose leader is superior. We fight one another, yet rarely ask whether our children are safe in schools, workers protected in factories or families secure beneath their own roofs. Then tragedy strikes and silence begins to feel like a moral failure. Writing becomes a duty.
On 15 October 2026, a private school roof collapsed in Peshawar’s Dir Colony. According to reports, 34 children and two female teachers died; more than 50 children were injured, some critically. Imagine parents preparing breakfast, packing schoolbags and sending children off with hopes for their future. By afternoon, some waited for bodies, others for news outside hospital wards. Classrooms meant to nurture dreams became places of unbearable loss. Some of the injured remain in hospital, while families expecting ordinary afternoons now face lives permanently divided into before and after. What kind of society cannot promise that a child will return safely from school?
This was no isolated warning. In Lahore’s Kahna neighbourhood, a tuition centre roof collapse killed 14 children. Another collapse at a school in Baghbanpura killed one child and injured four. Fires at Karachi’s Ali Enterprises factory, Regent Plaza and Gul Plaza, the LDA Plaza fire and Sundar Industrial Estate collapse in Lahore and disasters in Mehran Town and Lyari reveal a wider failure. The circumstances differ, but the questions endure: were building standards enforced, warnings heeded and exits kept clear? At Ali Enterprises, workers who left home to earn a living never returned. In Mehran Town, barred windows and blocked exits reportedly made escape from a factory fire painfully difficult. Workers at Sundar Industrial Estate had reportedly expressed concern about cracks in the building before it collapsed. Too often, the people exposed to danger are the last to be heard. Their warnings receive attention only after lives are lost.
Unsafe homes expose another injustice. In Karachi’s Lyari, residents remained in a building declared dangerous, without a workable alternative. Where should a struggling family go: beneath a roof that might fall or into the street? Warning people is not protection when poverty leaves them nowhere safe to turn. Each disaster comes the familiar performance: condolences, ministerial visits, disturbing footage, compensation announcements, arrests and committees of inquiry. For several days, outrage fills the headlines. Then another political battle takes over. The tragedy does not end; our attention does.
Investigations matter only if they change what happens next. How many findings become public? How many recommendations are carried out? How many dangerous buildings are repaired or evacuated? When negligence is proven, are responsible parties actually held accountable? A report filed away cannot save the next child. Nor does responsibility begin and end with owners or contractors. Who approves plans and additional floors? Who registers schools and factories, inspects buildings and enforces fire safety rules? Where laws are inadequate, who fixes them? Where they are ignored, who answers for that failure? Accountability must follow the decisions that permitted danger to persist, while respecting due process.
There are practical answers. Require independent, regular safety inspections of schools, seminaries, tuition centres, factories and residential towers. Publish clear reports. Give parents, workers and residents a voice in monitoring hazards and a safe way to report them. Evacuate dangerous structures promptly, but provide displaced families with housing and uninterrupted schooling. Set public deadlines for inquiries and corrective action. Hold both private operators and negligent officials responsible when the evidence justifies it.
Our collective priorities must change, too. We defend political leaders passionately and mobilize against opposing parties, yet struggle to unite around the right of every citizen to live without avoidable danger. No allegiance should outweigh a child’s life. Safety should never depend on a family’s income or political connections. In Peshawar, a schoolbag lies untouched in a home where its owner will never return. Elsewhere, parents wait beside injured children, fearing every hour. They deserve more than sympathy or compensation. They deserve justice and reforms that prevent other families from suffering their fate.
Roofs seldom fall without warning; deadly fires are not always inevitable. Before buildings collapse, safeguards are ignored. Before flames spread, exits are obstructed. Before lives are lost, responsibilities have already been abandoned. After every tragedy, we recover bodies from the rubble, but fail to recover the lessons buried with them. The question is not when the next roof will fall or factory burn. It is when those entrusted with preventing such disasters will finally be held accountable. Repeated tragedies are no longer merely accidents; they are an indictment of a system failing its most basic duty: protecting human life.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Canada.