Plan ready to hand over Rani Bagh to private sector

Recreation facility sprawling over 54 acres in a shambles

HYDRABAD:

Rani Bagh, the largest yet lackluster recreational facility of Hyderabad, featuring a zoo, mechanical rides, an open air theater, grassy lawn and garden on its 54 acres of centrally located land, will soon be handed over to private sector.

Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner Fuad Ghaffar Soomro has been made project director of the facility called Rani Bagh or the Queen's Garden, told The Express Tribune that the government is hiring a consultant to conduct a feasibility study in this regard.

"Rani Bagh will be handed over to a company under the public private partnership model," he said.

According to sources, the facility remained under the administrative control of Qasimabad Municipal Committee with the Sindh Irrigation Minister Jam Khan Shoro and his younger brother Kashif Shoro, former chairman of QMC, its de facto heads. However, the bureaucracy wrung it somehow out of their control recently.

Hyderabad Commissioner Muhammad Abbass Baloch also held some meetings with some architects and landscaping experts during the last one year but to no avail. After appointing the Hyderabad DC as the PD the Sindh local government and housing town planning department has also recently floated a tender for hiring consulting services.

Read More: SHC seeks arguments on KMC report on zoo animals

Plight of Zoo animals

However, this also comes as a tacit admission of the government's failure to efficiently run the place which happens to be the one of a kind in the entire city. In October last year an advocacy group, Rights Now Pakistan, filed a petition in the Sindh High Court and complained about the miserable conditions in which the zoo's animals are being kept. The petitioners Tanzeela Baig, Shahid Lateef Soomro, Hira Sultana and Sonia Sajid Wassan, that the animals were not being given proper food, water and care in the cages.

According to them, there was one pair each of ostriches, pony horses, wild cats, crocodiles with six hatchlings; two of white deer; three of rabbits; and four each of peacocks and parrots in the zoo. Additionally, six foxes, two wolves, four monkeys, a zebra, a snake, a mink and a blue bull besides hens, goats, ducks and a Macaw bird, were also caged there.

"This city needs a place for recreational activities and we already have one but that place ought to be brought on a par with the modern day facilities," the DC underlined. He also emphasized that the animals kept in the zoo also need to be given proper care.

Hiring of consultant

The consultant is supposed to conduct the feasibility study for the design, build, finance, operate, maintain and transfer (DFOMT) or the PPP models based handover of the facility to a private firm. They will also be required to provide the advisory services for development of Rani Bagh.

The consultant will also have to assess the existing infrastructure which apparently appears in decay especially in the zoo and the funland. The parks also seem to be in bad shape. Preparing the master plan of Rani Bagh, making institutional arrangements, creating transaction mechanisms, assessing financial, socio-economic and environmental viability will also be part of their task.

The consultant will also prepare the bidding documents as per the PPP model and will assist the PD Rani Bagh's team in selection of the most suitable bidder. The prospective private companies can obtain the documents from November 18 till December 22 while the bids will be opened publicly at the office of the local government and housing town planning department, Karachi, on December 23.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2021.