ISLAMABAD: After a long struggle to establish a national level museum in the federal capital to house thousands of rare artifacts, only Rs 4.5 million have been allocated in the budget to re-design the already designed museum.
According to an official source, the architectural design of the proposed National Museum of Pakistan was finalised through a competition soon after acquisition of 8.33 acres of land at Shakarparian from the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in 2009.
The authorities concerned have now decided to construct museum on three acres after redesigning it due to limited resources. “All the previous efforts, including amount spent on holding a competition to finalise the design and land acquisition, would now go waste,” the source said.
In 2008, the PC-I of Rs 13,569.589 million was submitted to the authorities but the project was suspended by the then secretary culture due to financial constraints.
The Department of Archeology and Museums (DOAM) again submitted PC-I of Rs 55.577 million in September 2015 to the relevant ministry which was again not approved.
The source said thousands of artifacts discovered from various historical places in the country or recovered by Customs were at risk of ruining for not having a proper facility in the federal capital to preserve them.
These antiquities included handwritten Holy Quran scripts, unique sculptures of Buddhist era, clay utensils, British era guns, oil lamps, jewellery boxes, mother goddess sculptures, lantern, and many others, the source said.
These artifacts were housed in warehouses of different museums while some were placed at the floors in different small rooms of the Department of Archaeology and Museums (DOAM) due to lack of space at Sir Syed Memorial Museum Hall, the source added.
After independence, the national museum was established in Karachi, which was supposed to be shifted to Islamabad after becoming the federal capital.
A nucleus of the National Museum of Pakistan was established in a private house of E-7 Sector in 1994 but the project was rolled back in 1998 with shifting of the artifacts stored there to Taxila Museum.
Again in 2002, the nucleus of National Museum was established in a small hall of Sir Syed Memorial Building in Islamabad where only 145 selected artifacts of the previous museum could be housed, while the remaining were stored in Taxila Museum.