Islamabad’s unsustainable park

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By Q. Isa Daudpota

I ATE lunch and read a book in the sun last Sunday. Then it got cold and I moved inside, but the lights were off. I therefore left home for the office, hoping to find it better endowed.

As I left the dark neighbourhood, I passed by a gas station near the vacated Margalla Towers (destroyed in the earthquake) with at least a 75-metre long queue of cars waiting to fill up with CNG. I thanked my lucky stars for not having spent Rs40,000 for a CNG kit on which so many people are now dependent. Clearly, we have a major energy crisis.

Opposite the Margalla Tower is the Fatima Jinnah Park. Earlier in the day I visited it to update my September 2007 report: ‘Fatima Jinnah Park – Metaphor For Pakistan’s Problems And Their Solution’. A great deal is happening in there, with the first phase of its ‘beautification’ almost over and the next phase about to begin. This work is the brainchild of Mr Kamran Lashari, CDA chairman, with design consultancy by the architect, Mr Nayyar Ali Dada.

The first thing you notice as you enter the newly constructed area is a paved walking path. It is made out of very uneven stones on which people can easily trip — many already have injured themselves, I was told by my guide. Give up plans of bringing your friend in a wheelchair for an outing here, and don’t wear heels. The standard of the floor stonework is poor all over and this extends to the vast new car park that has been laid out. If so many people are expected, how can only six new toilets under construction suffice?

Apart from the high cost, the non-porous surfaces stop the rain seeping into the ground and recharging the groundwater. Instead most of the water flows towards Pindi causing serious flooding there. Why couldn’t have a cheap porous gravel or clay path sufficed? In all such extravagant plans it is easy to see who gains by going for the expensive option.

Lining this path are new trees planted prematurely, covered with hay to avoid them being frost-bitten. (Trees imported from Thailand for Rawal Lake Park — perhaps even for this park — another extravagant and poorly planned area, have died according to a Dawn report of Jan 26. This import of foreign trees is unconscionable as the city’s allergic residents suffer greatly from the pollen of paper mulberry, an imported plant that is self-propagating and difficult to destroy).

Having failed to take note of the right time to plant the trees was no excuse for installing a 120-watt spotlight for each new tree. All these lights are kept on until late into the early morning. So I guess they and other new lights all over the park are kept lit until sunrise. This when we have an energy crunch.

The sides of the walkways are lined with long water drains lined with rounded pebbles. This labour-intensive task has been accomplished at Rs12/sq foot just for labour, and the quality of work is such that I could make the pebbles come out very easily, showing the shoddiness of the work due to lack of supervision. The expert mason who took me around — one was thoroughly disgusted with the waste on site — showed me the stone lamp box he was constructing which overall, in his estimate, would each cost close to Rs10,000.

I also noticed a number of fire hoses spread all over the park driven by a common pressure pump. And this in a place where there is little or no danger of fire, while next door in the large busy F-10 market, or for that matter any market in the capital, there is not a single fire-fighting outlet.

North of the park lies the large Pakistan Air Force colony. It has for years been dumping raw sewage into the park through a water drain. The nearby navy colony does the same into another rainwater drain, which thankfully does not come into the park but ends up in Pindi.

Both these colonies pump their own water from the fast depleting aquifer consuming lots of electric power. Then this potable water is used to water their golf course, while their sewage gets pushed into the park. Soon they will be joined by their cousins in the army who will take over the adjoining sector, thereby further denuding the reservoir, not to speak of increasing the general level of pollution.

All this comes at a time when it has become clear that the government failed to take care of the energy and food supplies. With energy shortages so common, it is incredible that the city planners fail to see the need for designs that are sustainable. The CDA has a budget of about Rs25bn for development, and it has set about spending it as if there is no tomorrow. This city of less than one million people spends on itself more than half the development budget of the whole of the NWFP and well over one-third the total budget of Balochistan. No surprise then that the provinces are annoyed.

An international junk food outlet appeared through carving prime land from the park. This place flourishes despite a legal notice served on it by Senator Saadia Abbasi. The petition was to be heard by a bench headed by the Chief Justice but then he got fired and nothing has happened since.

The monstrous Centaurus complex, which aims to turn Islamabad into an ugly version of Dubai with its high-rises and extravagant living, has speeded up its construction activities, despite opposition to it at a public hearing. Centaurus, an unsustainable project, caters solely for the elite and is against the government’s own ‘Vision’. It will take away scarce natural resources that would otherwise have been used by the poor and the middle-class citizen.

The new government post-Feb 18 will need to investigate the shady operations in and around the park. Reversing the harm being done will present a test case for the new government. If it fails to correct the problem under its nose, it is unlikely to succeed in doing good anywhere.

The author is a physicist with an interest in environment.

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