A curious case of complacency: Islamabad Cultural Complex hosting bacterial cultures

Intended to preserve Pakistan’s cultural heritage, abandoned project now rests in pieces.

ISLAMABAD:

Located in the scenic Shakarparian area, the unfinished Islamabad Cultural Complex was destined to symbolise the rich cultural heritage of the country.

However, after years of stalled development, the only impressively designed set of buildings in the capital has fallen into ruin.

The establishment of a cultural complex in Islamabad was the brainchild of beleaguered, former president Pervez Musharraf. After watching a stage play at an Islamabad Club auditorium in April 2005, he announced the project and asked then-CDA chairman Kamran Lashari — who was also in attendance — to initiate it.

However, the CDA took over two years to initiate the project. Eventually, in August 2007, the project was initiated in the vicinity of Lotus Lake near Shakarparian, with September 2009 as its completion date.

Today, four Septembers later, unfinished structures which were supposed to be part of the project present a picture of devastation at the site.

The PC-I for the project was worked out at Rs 1.1 billion, with the facility to operate on a self-financing basis.

According to the layout plan, the project would include nine different buildings spread over 25 acres were to be constructed. These would house auditoriums, conference halls, an amphitheatre, two cinemas, cafeterias, study rooms, display centres and gazebos, art galleries, restaurants, a mosque and an administration building. The contractor, Builders Associates, was engaged to undertake the project while Associated Consulting Engineers was the consultant.

Formal construction work started on January 2008, and 28 per cent of the total work was completed by September 2009. Later in the same year, the authority decided to put work on hiatus.

Background interactions with several officials who had previously remained attached with the project show that the biggest reasons for the delay were financial constraints and a lack of interest from successive CDA managements.

For the last two financial years, no allocation was made by the CDA for this project, with the last allocation coming in the financial year 2010-11 — a mere Rs5 million.

Now, the situation is such that the authority has removed it from the list of on-going CDA projects altogether.

In 2011, former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani took some interest in the project and issued directives to release a supplementary grant amounting to Rs 400 million for the project, overlooking the fact that the CDA was supposed to finance the project with its own resources.

However the finance wing of the authority, under bridge-financing, utilised the grant for the Kashmir Highway widening project instead.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) objected to this move by the CDA’s financial advisor, but no action was ever taken against anyone.

Meanwhile, the contractor for the project claimed cost escalation of 75 per cent, citing a sharp increase in the prices of construction materials, which saw the cost shoot up to Rs1.85 billion from the earlier Rs1.1 billion estimate.

An updated request showing the cost escalation was sent to the Planning Commission for approval, but it was rejected and returned. Then in 2012, the contractor claimed further cost escalation of 70 per cent which saw the new estimate rise to Rs2.5 billion.

The contractor then moved the courts seeking  contract nullification on the grounds the CDA did not resume work.

The bank guarantee submitted by the contractor had expired in 2009, and while the CDA tried to cash the performance guarantee for the project, the contractor obtained a stay order from a local court, where the case is still pending. An additional Rs120 million was also released to it by the civic agency as a mobilisation advance.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2014.