Daily Times

The federal capital is stormed with yet another controversy. Once again, it is about the sheer violence of the Margalla Hills National Park. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has jump-started the construction of Margalla Avenue, beginning from Sangjani to sector D-12, without any Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) approved by the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA). The catastrophe is that the six-lane Expressway has entered three kilometres deep into the Margalla Hills National Park. CDA has continued with its paving work despite repeated alerts and an Environmental Protection Order (EPO) from Pak-EPA about a week back. The situation is so grave. CDA is playing beyond its constitutional mandate and violating other constitutional frameworks.

The environmental experts, activists, and civil society leadership are standing against CDA, which could create another chaos in the capital city if the needful is not done. Now, they are eying on the Prime Minister’s office for intervention into the sorry affairs that the CDA has stubbornly continued. A former bureaucrat has written a letter to the Prime Minister briefing about the concerns of the citizens and actualities. Earlier, Devcom-Pakistan organised a webinar to highlight the issue that received good space in the media for public awareness and to alert the higher authorities on what is happening in the Margalla Hills.

A bureaucrat cannot continue with the controversial construction without any strong support on the back.

The environmentalists, joined by the residents of sector D-12, were to come on the streets to protest against the environmental disaster on the weekend. They postponed the protest because of the OIC conference. Margalla Avenue is not the only grey initiative of the green-masked government. The incentivized opening of the housing sector has expedited the frequency of grey practices and projects by eating up the green lands. The concerned citizens and the environmentalists keep on unmasking such practices. But unfortunately, no action despite the “notice” was taken by the higher authorities. The lean actions against the grey projects and practices have encouraged the CDA type organizations to cross their limits and mandate.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has set some extraordinary examples for the protection of the environment. One such precedent is that he asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister to scrap more than 300 contracts of stone mining from the Margalla Hills and other parts of the province. An unprecedented number of green initiatives are on the credit of the present government. Thanks to the green vision of the prime minister and its implementation by his Special Assistant on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam. Margalla Avenue too needs their attention urgently.

Strangely, Margalla Avenue was born controversial. Several hitches were attached to it from the day it was launched by the then prime minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani in 2012. Its hasty completion in one year was planned with the cost of PKR 744 million that has increased manifolds now. The controversy was knitted around the reasons including the number of lanes, size and nature of construction, its route and cost, and most importantly its environmental consequences. Simply it was termed as ill-planned and put on the back burner until the Prime Minister’s “favourite” CDA chairman Amer Ahmed Ali expedited the construction of the Avenue without taking the stakeholders on board. His men and contractors since then never looked back. Citizens’ hue and cry, Pak-EPA memos, and Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) letters could not halt the work. Certainly, a bureaucrat cannot continue with the controversial construction without any strong support on the back. Shall we think of the prime minister or any of his close aides on his behalf or a top boss in uniform supporting the ill-planned Margalla Avenue? If none of them, the citizens shall be satisfied with halting the construction until their concerns are addressed. However, it is the FWO (Frontier Works Organisation)-the contractor in uniform-that is constructing it.

While the conservationists and environmentalists have their own concerns on the construction of Margalla Avenue, the residents of sector D-12, where this Expressway has to end, have their genuine apprehensions too. They believe that the six-lane Margalla Avenue will enhance the traffic congestion as heavy traffic will be entering from Sangjani to single-lane D-12 service roads. It will add to the noise and air pollution besides disturbing the entire residential sectors around with the massive movement of public and goods transportation.

They have formed an action committee to interact with the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and to protest against the most controversial road project. Representatives of sector D-12 have reacted to the CDA statement at the Pak-EPA hearing of the EIA submitted that the stakeholders were consulted. A bunch of lies. No one was ever consulted on Margalla Avenue. The residents genuinely believe that sector D-12 will be turned into jail as there is no alternate access to D-12.

Everything will be destroyed until the stakeholders adopt any constitutional and legal measures. Islamabad High Court (IHC) reserved a verdict in October this year but never pronounced it. Justice is being deliberately delayed until complete havoc is played. Sorry affairs at the courts too!

The writer is an Islamabad-based policy advocacy, strategic communication and outreach expert. He can be reached atdevcom.pakistan@gmail.com. He tweets @EmmayeSyed