Four victims of the crash at the Karwa bus station in downtown Doha on Friday have been identified as two Indian nationals and two expats from the Philippines.
Philippine nationals Acasar Barabay Arato, 50, and Marescia Mendoza Tanaid, a 30-year-old woman, were killed at the Al Ghanem bus station near Souq Waqif for bus 156 when the driver lost control and plowed into the waiting passengers at around 12:30pm on Friday.
Tanaid was working in Qatar as a housemaid, while Arato was a security supervisor at a contracting and trading company, the Philippine Embassy confirmed to Doha News.
Meanwhile, local media has named the Indian victims as colleagues Mobin Mohamed Khan, 33, and Sanjay Kumar Jaiswal, 35.
The men came from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), The Peninsula reports. Jaiswal was from Raebareli district in central UP, while Khan’s home town is unconfirmed.
Representatives of the Indian embassy could not be reached on Sunday morning.
No one at state transport company Mowasalat, which is responsible for operating the Karwa buses, has responded to repeated calls from Doha News.
And, some 48 hours after the incident, Mowasalat has still not issued a statement.
What happened
Witnesses at the crowded bus station previously told Doha News that the bus had pulled in at one part of the terminal to drop off passengers, and had driven round to the stand marked for routes 56 and 156 to collect more commuters.
However, it appears that the driver lost control, crashed through concrete barriers, drove through a passenger island and came to a stop in the adjacent parking lot after t-boning a taxi cab.
Several of the waiting passengers were hit and knocked down in the incident. Four were killed and others reportedly injured.
It is not clear what caused the crash, though one witness said he observed the bus accelerating at the last moment.
The Peninsula reports the bus driver as being a Nepali national, who had been transferred to public transport after previously working as a school bus driver.
Safety fears
It has raised a number of concerns about the layout and safety of the bus station, which gets very crowded particularly on Thursday evenings and Fridays when many people have a day off.
Just hours after the accident, people could be seen thronging the paved lot despite requests from security officials to keep behind the barriers.
This is the second incident at the station in the last 16 months.
In August 2013, a vehicle drove into a crowd of people at the same station, injuring more than a dozen after the driver apparently lost control of his bus.
Concrete barriers have since been put in place at the bus station. However, they appear to have failed to stop the vehicle in the most recent incident.
Thoughts?
First of all: what they call a “bus station” isn’t a bus station at all. It’s basically an empty space. Secondly: when it comes to public security Qatar is about 250 years behind in using the state-of-the-art technologies. Even the “bus shelters” at the bus stops are not more than sun roofs. And thirdly: it is not important if foreigners get killed as long as it’s not a national. They’d rather kill themselves driving Land Cruisers faster than the roads allow.
Not responding to repeated calls and inquiries and neither issuing a statement two days after the tragedy says a lot about this transport organization and makes us ask more questions on how safe it is to travel in their vehicles, buses and taxis included
I have to say I was rather shocked to see on the front page of the Gulf Times today the headline
“Two Indians among bus accident victims” on the print edition.
The article reads in full:
Two victims of Friday’s accident involving a Mowasalat public transport bus at the Doha Central Bus Station were Indian expatriates, sources told Gulf Times. The other two were earlier identified as Filipino nationals.
The bodies of Khan Mohamed Mubin (33) and Jeswan Sanjay Kumar (35) were identified by their colleagues. Both were working in the same company, sources added.
Mubin came from Rai Bareli and Kumar from Lucknow, both in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it is learnt.
Of the two Filipinos killed in the accident, one was a woman.
The accident occurred when a bus rammed into a group of waiting passengers at the bus station in Doha’s Frij Al Ghanim area around 12.30pm on Friday.
http://www.gulf-times.com/qatar/178/details/419755/bus-station-accident%3A-two-indians-among-victims
In other words – 2 Indians tragically killed in a horrific bus accident. In other, less important news, 2 Filipino nationals also killed. In the same accident.
Sickening.
The link you shared just says that the news of the 2 Filipino’s were confirmed earlier. Not cause they were less important. I haven’t seen the Print Edition, but I assume it’s similar as most people view Indians and Filipino’s in the same “Hierarchy Level” here, unlike the Europeans, Americans , Arabs or Locals.
Representatives of the Indian embassy couldn’t be reached!…So routine..They are hiding in the their cosy offices !!
… or perhaps out of the office checking on their own little businesses that they may have going on, on the side with their local partners.
Here is the telling statement
“Representatives of the Indian embassy could not be reached on Sunday morning.”
The Indian embassy could not care less about their nationals. Just a resource to be exploited for financial gain. Dead Indians are just an inconvenience to them. shameful.
RIP to all who were just here trying to make their lives a little better for themselves and their families.
The Asian embassies in general do not care. They are just for name sake here.
what i know is, in Qatar, Public Relations means a Mandoop who go to immigration for visa stuff. This mandoop do not study Public Relations, they know nothing about Public Relations, and am pretty sure they never set their eyes on any Public Relations book. However, one, two, three big company’s have huge Public Relations dept with people who actually study Public Relations but i “think” majority are journalist, marketer turn PR.
Now, to the subject of discussion, i do not really know what is difficult or damaging to any embassy to come out and say ” we had about the accident or incident and we really are sad for the demise of our citizens, ITS A SAD DAY FOR OUR COMMUNITY, this is not just the dead family loss but our loss. we are investigating the incident or accident. we have visited the scene, take some pictures, talk to witness, in contact with right authority, trying to reach the dead family here or back home, arranging for deportation of the dead, investigating the company this guys work for. we shall try our best to make sure these guys death is not in vane,. we are responsible for all our citizens here and we will make sure that the dead family get what they deserve in compensation. shut down their website for few min in respect for the dead or all embassy staff wear black for a day etc.”
Maybe my write-up is not good enough about what i think this embassy should do concerning PR, but i think this is not in anyway damaging to Qatar and this embassy relations. Qatar cyber law don’t say ” be silent” but say something reasonable with respect to the situation and valid point and not out of reach.
What is difficult in this, i don’t know.
You would think so, put out a statement giving sympathy and saying you are following up with the relevant authorities even if you don’t care. By saying nothing you are showing the world you don’t care about two dead Indians. If the Indian embassy doesn’t care about dead Indians then who will.
these mowasalat are getting things wrong in the sense that they have refused to respond to the calls of the media. we all know that possibly the only justice the victims can get is from the media if possible since they are not citizens. in some violent countries the station would have being set ablaze by now as they refused to respond to the media, so they are lucky to be operating here in qatar
what i know is, in Qatar, Public Relations means a Mandoop who go to immigration for visa stuff. This mandoop do not study Public Relations, they know nothing about Public Relations, and am pretty sure they never set their eyes on any Public Relations book. However, one, two, three big company’s have huge Public Relations dept with people who actually study Public Relations but i “think” majority are journalist, marketer turn PR.
Now, to the subject of discussion, i do not really know what is difficult or damaging to any embassy to come out and say ” we had about the accident or incident and we really are sad for the demise of our citizens, ITS A SAD DAY FOR OUR COMMUNITY, this is not just the dead family loss but our loss. we are investigating the incident or accident. we have visited the scene, take some pictures, talk to witness, in contact with right authority, trying to reach the dead family here or back home, arranging for deportation of the dead, investigating the company this guys work for. we shall try our best to make sure these guys death is not in vane,. we are responsible for all our citizens here and we will make sure that the dead family get what they deserve in compensation. shut down their website for few min in respect for the dead or all embassy staff wear black for a day etc.”
Maybe my write-up is not good enough about what i think this embassy should do concerning PR, but i think this is not in anyway damaging to Qatar and this embassy relations. Qatar cyber law don’t say ” be silent” but say something reasonable with respect to the situation and valid point and not out of reach.
What is difficult in this, i don’t know.
I presume that any investigation will check the bus for faults? Might have been a problem with the vehicle that caused the accident rather than driver error. If there is a vehicle fault are the other buses of the same type being checked?
Our so called human rights activists (including Indians) call for rights of expats whereas their own national embassies don’t care about even their dead nationalists…They all are just showy, caring only for their business.
THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THAT IT HAPPENED IN AL GHANEM BUS STATION!!
So my questions are: What is the KARAWA management doing to prevent from happening this again??
Why cant they built a platform or barrier for the waiting passengers to be safe while the bus is maneuvering to park? Such a senseless waste of life! RIP to the victims and condolences to the victims families.