The owner and manager of a malfunctioning cable car that left eight people stranded above a deep gorge in Pakistan has been arrested for ignoring multiple warnings about the safety of the facility, local police said on Thursday.
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Six schoolchildren were stranded with two adults for more than 12 hours on Tuesday after their gondola broke down in a remote mountainous region in the north-west of the country before they were rescued in the evening.
“The cables used were of poor quality and the machines also needed an overhaul,” Tahir Ayub Khan, a senior police official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP.
“The first notification was delivered to the owner in June and a second in August,” he added.
The owner has been instructed to renew the machines, improve the quality of the cables and obtain a safety certificate from the local government, Khan said.
“The manager and owner have both been arrested by police for investigation,” he said.
The teenagers were on their way to school, where three of them were due to collect their diplomas, when two of the three cables that powered the hut snapped, bringing it to a halt more than 300m above the cliff.
After being rescued, some passengers on the makeshift cable car told AFP that on several occasions they had lost all hope and contemplated jumping.
“Some of the kids were very frustrated and were thinking about jumping, but the older passengers gave us confidence,” said Rizwan Ullah, 15.
A first child was eventually flown out at 12 hours as daylight faded. The army helicopter then had to return to the base due to weather conditions and nightfall.
Commandos from Pakistan’s Special Service Group (SSG), known as “Maroon Berets,” and local experts then used the cable holding the basket as a zipline to rescue the rest of the group.
In Pakistan, such self-made huts, operated by cables or sometimes simple ropes, are often used to connect remote villages in mountainous regions.
Authorities on Wednesday announced the closure of all such units in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for a week while they are inspected.