Islamabad. PHOTO: EXPRESS
“All [hotels and restaurants] have been constructed without any environmental approval from Pak-EPA, and are undoubtedly causing incessant damage to the ecosystem and spiking levels of pollution in the vicinity [of the park],” said Adviser to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam on Wednesday while visiting the site of a popular restaurant on the Margalla Hills to inspect the damage inflicted on the green cover by construction activity there. Construction for an expansion to the restaurant had been halted on the orders of the Supreme Court after it emerged that the restaurant’s management had felled some 200 trees to make room for the expansion.
The adviser said that they will not allow anyone to play havoc with the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) and that nobody will be allowed to cut down trees or carry out any construction activities for any purpose on the site.
He lamented that the restaurant management was carrying out non-conforming construction activities in a clandestine manner, causing massive land degradation. “It will take a long time to restore [the area] to its previous state.”
On the denuding of the forest around the restaurant and why the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) and Pak-EPA did not react sooner, Aslam explained that they had seen some photos of tree cutting and land levelling near the restaurant at the top of the hill circulating on social media. After verifying that the images were authentic, Aslam said that Pak-EPA, Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), and Islamabad district administration officials conducted a joint raid on May 18 and sealed the restaurant. He added that a first information report (FIR) was registered against two suspects, Sagheer and Muhammad Naeem at the Kohsar police station.
“We have already directed to take all possible legal actions against those involved in tree cutting and causing environmental damage to the park,” Aslam added.
SC order
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court (SC) issued its three-page long written order in the case on preserving the MHNP.
It said, “the entire area of the Margalla Hills, spreading in Islamabad, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Punjab, has since long declared as a heritage site and National park.”
It added that no part of it can be allotted to any private person, either for residential purposes or for any sort of commercial activity.
"We are informed that a large number of trees have been removed and cut-down for stated expansion of the restaurant and the acting chairman of Capital Development Authority (CDA) is fully familiar with such a situation and states that he has taken action on this occurrence and sealed the restaurant," it read.
CDA chairman further assured the court that the trees that have been chopped down shall be restored with sufficiently tall and grown-up trees.
“The construction work of Monal or any other restaurant or any other premises in the Margalla Hills is stayed altogether”, the court ordered.
“It is stated that all these constructions are illegal and against the very spirit of the Margalla Hills being declared as a heritage site and national park, and all such constructions and activities have to be stopped and demolished and the Margalla Hills restored,” the order further read.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 21st, 2020.
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