May 03, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, May 2: After expanding horizontally for decades, Islamabad has started rising vertically. But can its existing network of services — sewage, water and electricity — bear the oncoming burden?

That question is haunting thinking men even in the Capital Development Authority (CDA) which last week raised the limit of four storeys on the commercial buildings in markaz (centre) of each sector to 10 storeys.

Sources in CDA confided in Dawn on Wednesday that the networks would prove insufficient to service the upcoming highrise buildings.

They said CDA’s “top bureaucracy” had sold more than 50 plots for highrise buildings of up to 47 storeys without any comprehensive planning for the services they would need.

Work has already started on most of these buildings such as the 47-storey Centaurs six-star hotel in Blue Area with 300- apartment buildings, 42-storey Grand Heights six-star hotel near Jinnah Convention Centre, five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Sector F-5, 20-storey State Life building, 24-storey Telecom Tower, 18-storey Stock Exchange Building in Blue Area, 10-storey Silver Oaks apartment building in F-10 Markaz, 13 apartment buildings in Sector F-11 and five apartment buildings in Sector G-11.

Besides, owners are sure to avail the permission granted by the CDA to add more floors to their commercial buildings in each sector’s Markaz.

If the emerging problem of overburdened services was not addressed at this stage, “whole of Islamabad would have to be dug up in not too distant a future to relay the service lines,” the sources warned, reminding that the sewage pipes laid at the time of building the new capital of Pakistan 47 years ago were of six- inch diameter only.

Even otherwise the worn out system needed to be replaced after nearly half a century.

While agreeing that the system would not sustain the future rigours, CDA’s acting chairman Kamran Qureshi assured that the next budget of the civic body would focus on improving the services.

“The current fiscal year was dedicated to roads but the next budget would focus on improvement of services,” he said, noting citizens’ complaints that leaking sewage was contaminating their water supply and causing diseases.

Not just sewage problems stare at the people of Islamabad but they face severe shortages of water and electricity.

CDA’s Rs30 billion Ghazi Barotha water project, believed to be the only remedy to meet water shortage, is said to be in doldrums after the ministry of water and power directed the CDA to cut its daily requirement by 50 million gallon and provide equal share to Rawalpindi city.

Additional electricity for the city is a far cry as the country as a whole is facing power crisis and loadshedding is being practised to ration energy.

Turning ‘Islamabad the Beautiful’ into a concrete jungle would also create traffic problems due to lack of parking areas in commercial centres.