Promoting sports: Rawalpindi to have four new cricket, hockey grounds

RDA also working on underground parking facility in Commercial Market.

RAWALPINDI:

The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) is building four new sports stadiums in the city at a cost of Rs109 million.

RDA’s Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) Managing Director Muhammad Akram Soban says the projects will be completed by August 14 this year.

He said the authority is working on two floodlit cricket grounds with pavilions at Dhoke Kashmirian and Muslim High School on Saidpur Road. The government has allocated Rs56 million for the two projects.

Soban said RDA will also build a cricket stadium for women at the Viqarun Nisa postgraduate college. An amount of Rs26 million has been set aside for the facility.

Similarly, Rs27 million have been earmarked for a hockey stadium in the city.

Moreover, the PHA official said Rs150 million have been allocated for a civil aviation park on Rawal Road. “The park will have cricket, volleyball, basketball, tennis and swimming facilities as well as a lake which will be used for rain harvesting.”

He said the authority has also planned to upgrade 46 parks in the city, adding PHA is trying to clear encroachments from two sites earmarked for parks. The civic authority, he informed, also plans to construct an underground parking facility in the bustling Commercial Market.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6^th, 2014.