Beautification: CDA to reinstall fibre-glass of dinosaurs at Marghazar Zoo

They were removed from Ankara Park as huge crowd thronged the place: official.

ISLAMABAD: The city managers have been shifting dozens of fibre-glass models of dinosaurs from one location to another for installation, finally they have found a destination for them-- at the Marghazar Zoo.

The Marghazar Zoo, situated at the foothills of the Margalla Hills, stretched over an area of 25-acre, has now been selected by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) as the new destination for the different-sized models of dinosaurs. The models would be installed there in month’s time.

In the last three years, the CDA announced several locations, including Ankara Park, Lake View Park, Kachnar Park in Sector I-8, Japanese Park and the bank of Rawal Dam facing Murree Road, for the re-installation of the dinosaur replicas but every time it was delayed.



The CDA’s Project Management Office purchased these models in 2008 to install them in Lake View Park. Later, for some unknown reasons it was decided to install them in the Ankara Park on Club Road. The agreement cost of this project was estimated at around Rs40 million. “The fibre-glass models were installed in the Ankara Park in 2009 but they were removed from the park after 10 days of their installation,” CDA Spokesperson Ramzan Sajid said. He said that they were removed on account of security reasons, as huge crowd thronged the place to have a look of the gigantic models of dinosaurs along the road, which also caused traffic gridlock.

Since then, CDA had failed to find a suitable site to reinstall them, as the original purchaser, the PMO directorate, had passed on the responsibility of re-installation of the models to the CDA’s Parks Directorate. The models were first dumped in the Ankara Park under the open sky, only to be removed when the media highlighted the issue.

Later, the dinosaur models remained abandoned on the left side of the entrance of the Rawal Dam, where extensive humidity and wet ground caused damage to the replicas.

However, once again the move was criticised and the replicas were removed and currently they are lying somewhere near the zoo.

Ramzan Sajid said that to save replicas from damage at the hands of visitors it has been decided to re-erect them at the Marghazar Zoo after completely fencing them.

“Required funds for the transportation and re-installation of the replicas have been allocated and work on the project would be completed within a month time,” Sajid said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2013.