Heated issue needs solution

Despite all efforts and campaigns warning people not to leave their gas heaters on when they go to bed during the freezing winter nights, some people still ignore these warnings.

This dire neglect is taking a heavy toll on life, as happened during the most recent cold spell, when a newly wed couple and a family of four died of gas suffocation.

It is always easy to tell people who are poor and do not have the luxury of central or electric heating not to sleep before turning off their gas heaters, but in practice this is neither practical nor enough.

When the temperatures dip to zero or below, people have really no choice but to keep whatever heating system they running and hope for the best.

To ask them and their children to brave the freezing cold and sleep without heat is not a fair way of dealing with the problem.

This means the government must find safer ways to provide alternative, affordable, heating systems to people who are disadvantaged and cannot afford safer heating systems.

Obviously there is no easy answer to this problem, but as the saying goes, when there is a will there is a way.

Just as our authorities are convincing people to shift to solar energy, and are on the brink of making that compulsory by law, they should also adopt legislative measures to introduce safe kinds of heating to poor people.

This would come at a cost, but when heating in freezing winter conditions is viewed as a basic human right, then the government must step in and find ways to equip people with affordable and safe heating systems.

Human life is too precious to leave unsafe heating systems unaddressed.

The government must step in by establishing a committee for this purpose, composed of municipality officials and representatives of different pertinent ministries, aided by hi-tech people, with a view to coming up with ingenious ways to solve this issue once and for all.

The writer is chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights