National disgrace

Work on the development of a farmhouse, infringing on the area of National Park began a year ago.

It is an undeniable fact that private enterprise has, yet again, caught the Capital Development Authority (CDA) well and found it to have truly napped by “acquiring” — then beginning to develop — approximately 3,000 kanals of land, which was reportedly lying within the Margalla Hills National Park. This should give pause for serious thought in regard to the operational capabilities of a body set up to safeguard development ethics in “Islamabad the Green”.

Work on the development of this huge private housing scheme — located behind Sector D-12 in Zone III — actually began almost a year ago, when an illegal access road was cut through the low hills behind which the site lies. Protected trees, shrubs and undergrowth were cut down, high boundary walls were erected around the area, large plots were laid out and the construction of the first “farmhouse” was almost completed before, quite by accident, the CDA became aware that this serious infringement of the National Park had been made.

The Margalla Hills National Park, covering an area of 17,386 hectares, came into being over 30 years ago and yet, suddenly, now that it is faced with what could very well turn out to be a “test case” on just how far laws can be bent, the CDA, in a ridiculous attempt at saving face that it lost many years ago, claims that it isn’t actually certain where the exact boundaries of the Park are which, considering that it was delineated on its creation in 1980, is a fanciful attempt at innocence indeed.

The CDA Chairman Syed Tahir Shahbaz may take a measure of cold comfort in that the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency hadn’t, until now, got a clue of what was going on under its nose either, but since two wrongs do not make a right and immense environmental damage has already been done — irrespective of any legal action being instigated against the developer — both of these bodies should be taken to task for sheer incompetence and gross dereliction of duty.

This audacious bending — and, in cases too numerous to mention, outright breaking of rules, regulations and environmental laws spelled out so clearly that even a child can understand them — has been rife since measures were first initiated to protect the relatively tiny percentage of natural assets remaining throughout the length and breadth of this vastly overexploited country. It is way past time that serious steps are taken to ensure that legally introduced environmental measures are maintained in the spirit in which, it is presumed, they were brought into being.

In this specific instance, the developer, the CDA and the Environmental Protection Agency should, as a stern warning to others, all be made to face the music and dance.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2013.                                                                                          

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