January 22, 2007	Monday	Muharram 02, 1428

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

LAHORE, Jan 21: The Planning and Development department has asked Wildlife, Forestry and Fisheries secretary Javed Majeed to justify the revised master plan of Lahore Zoo as it has many flaws, it is learnt.

Sources in the Punjab Wildlife Department told Dawn that the rehabilitation of Lahore Zoo under a master plan was launched in January 2006 after Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi’s approval. The plan included reconstruction of a lion house, a chimpanzee island, a parking plaza, a cafe, remodelling of waterfall area and a bird aviary.

Mr Majeed, who assumed the charge in August 2006, paid many visits to the zoo thereafter and shared his concerns with the wildlife director-general and the Lahore Zoo director. Pointing out certain flaws in the master plan, he proposed changes to it a few months ago.

Sources said the P&D department had asked the wildlife and forest department to justify those proposals. They said the “Master Planning, Development and Improvement of Lahore Zoo” project had been approved by the department in February 2005 and it was estimated to cost Rs206.828 million.

Sources said the P&D department had consulted its board chairman, the chief secretary and the chief minister before the approval of the project. Now the revision of the master plan would affect the entire project and (most importantly) drain the investment of the previous year, they claimed.

They observed that the wildlife and forest department should have put forward the proposals through the P&D department which had been involved in the project right from its concept to designing. It was not sure what prompted the WFD to find faults with the master plan which, otherwise, was in line with the international standards, sources said.

The P&D department further observed that the ACE consultants were given a contract to design, plan and supervise the project against three per cent of the cost and a specialist for zoo designing and planning was hired.

The official had proposed that the designing should be handed over to the Punjab architect department and the resident supervision to the Communication and Works department. “This proposal seems unfeasible since the designing has already been done by the Punjab chief architect. Moreover, assigning resident supervision to the C&W department means compromising transparency because it will be like pooling the execution and validation in one agency,” sources explained the department’s objection.

They said the secretary had proposed levelling of the two existing hills overlooking the fact that they (hills) provided the animals with natural habitat. They were proposed to be kept intact in the original design.

Similarly, sources said, the secretary declared the pathways through the aviary quite small despite the fact that the original plan included 39,200sft pathways that were reduced to 20,610sft in the revised plan.

Since the project was at the advance stage, the P&D officials observed that the acceptance of the revised plan would be much more time consuming and costly and bring the project to square one.

The project is scheduled to be completed by next month (according to the original master plan).

The forest department had also proposed to develop a stand-alone scheme for parking, but the shift in design warranted a careful re-consideration viewing the proximity of the Chief Minister’s Secretariat on the Shahra-i-Quaid-i-Azam, sources said.

Said they: “The secretary has also proposed the establishment of a tunnel-type fish aquarium, but the P&D department is of the view that requisite expertise is not available in the country for its designing, operation and management”.