Following the cable car tragedy in Battagram, the interim administration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has mandated the inspection and safety audit of every chairlift installed in the province.
The province government’s instructions came on Tuesday, just hours after the special unit of the Pakistani Army and zipline experts rescued eight people, including six schoolboys, who had been stuck for hours in a broken cable car high above a rural valley in Allai Tehsil.
After nearly 12 hours as daylight dwindled, the daring rescue started with a helicopter hoisting one child in the air to safety, but the chopper was forced back to the base due to nightfall.
The remaining stranded people were then rescued late into Tuesday night using a cable that had been installed to prevent the gondola from falling into the valley.
All of the deputy commissioners in KP have been given new instructions that require them to conduct a safety audit of the chairlifts in their respective regions.
The advice recommended that the provincial government immediately investigate the chairlifts at all public, private, and recreational locations and that it should also evaluate the cable cars that have been built over rivers and canals.
All chairlifts’ designs, capacities, and safety features are to be reviewed by the DCs, who must submit their findings within a week.
All chairlifts’ designs, capacities, and safety features are to be reviewed by the DCs, who must submit their findings within a week.
Additionally, before installing cable cars, it is now necessary to get a No Objection Certificate from the district administration.
In the northern regions of KP and Gilgit-Baltistan, cable cars are widespread and play a crucial role in connecting towns and villages in places where highways cannot be constructed.
In a mountain hamlet close to the capital Islamabad in 2017, 10 people died when a chairlift cable broke, sending riders tumbling into a gorge.
