LAHORE: Civil society on Friday demanded the Punjab government to stop construction work on Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT) project near the Shalimar Gardens and expressed fear that it might be taken off from the UNESCO’s World Heritage register permanently. While addressing a press conference here at the Lahore Press Club on Friday, representatives of Lahore Conservation Society (LCS), including Maryam Hussain, renowned artist and activist Dr Ajaz Anwer, advocate and analyst Saroop Ijaz, Dr Nadeem Omat Tarar, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Vice President Fauzia Qureshi and others released a draft decision mentioning that “the OLMT poses an irreversible and permanent threat to Shalimar Gardens, which is a world heritage site”, and said that it might be taken off from world heritage register permanently if the project goes ahead as planned. “The World Heritage Committee has released the draft decision after the longstanding debate on the project of the Punjab government, which is continuing work on the project inside the 61m protective buffer zone of the international heritage site of Shalimar Gardens violating international laws as well national antiquities act,” they said. They said that the draft decision would be finalised after a vote of member states in the upcoming WHC meeting in July. They expressed fear that the work on the project near the Shalimar Gardens and the Lahore Fort would jeopardise future support – technical and financial – from the UNESCO, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seriously compromising the future of tourism revenues to the tune of billions of dollars annually. The urged the government of Pakistan to recognise its responsibility to its citizens and heritage legacy in which they take extreme pride and modify the OLMT project in line with international guidelines for heritage protection. The World Heritage Committee in its draft decision also urged the Punjab government to immediately suspend without delay any further work in the immediate vicinity of the Shalimar Gardens. It requested the Punjab government to identify an alternative location for the OLMT and deeply regretted that the Reactive Monitoring Mission was not invited (given visas by the Pakistan government) as requested by the World Heritage Committee. It expressed utmost concern over a no-objection certificate issued by the Punjab Department of Archaeology and Museums for the OLMT, and said that the Pakistan government had not complied with the requests made by the committee, nor proposed any clear way forward given the fact that construction work undertaken and planned for the OLMT posed a threat to the outstanding universal value (OUV) of the property. The draft said that no exhaustive impact assessment was undertaken for the OLMT or visual impact study as requested by the World Heritage Committee and requested the Punjab government to carry out a comprehensive Heritage Impact Assessment in line with WHC / ICOMOS guidelines, including a visual impact study to search for alternative locations. “The Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) provided to the WHC by the government is not in line with international standards and fails to address the full range of impacts of the project.” It added, “It is not clear on what grounds the Punjab government had decided that the OLMT would have no negative impacts on the OUV of the property, nor on what basis the Punjab Department of Archaeology had issued a NOC for the project. In the absence of any mitigation measures proposed by the Punjab government, it recommended that the committee immediately inscribed the property on the list of world heritage in danger.” It urged the government to invite a Reactive Monitoring Mission to define comprehensive mitigation measures and reverse threats to the property.