October 06, 2008	Monday	Shawwal 06, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: City managers have saved a public park from being taken over in the name of public interest - and saved their own image too in the process.

Dawn has learnt that chastened by the public action which made it abandon its plan to commercialise a city park, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has rejected the request of the Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH) to build a bigger hospital on the grounds of the Argentina Park and the Senate Standing Committee on Government Assurance endorsed the CDA’s stand.

Argentina Park is located in the city centre - between the General Post Office and the FGSH, commonly known as Poly Clinic.

The FGSH administration eyed the land of the park to construct a new six-storey hospital but the CDA stood firm against the idea.

Last week the matter was put to the Senate Standing Committee on Government Assurance to take a decision.

A member of the committee said that normally individuals and departments seeking land in Islamabad go to the CDA. But the FGSH administration instead approached Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani who referred the matter to the Senate committee for a decision. The Senate body invited both parties to hear their points of view.

The FGSH administration pleaded that the hospital was built for federal government employees but has been providing medical care to the general public for decades.

With the increase in population of Islamabad, the hospital needed to be expanded and required about 1.5 acres of land for that.

CDA representative agreed with the need but argued that the land of a park could not be given for the purpose to anyone.

Director Urban Planning Sarwar Sindhu told the Senate body that the CDA had allocated two sites - one in Sector I-8 and the other in G-10 - for constructing hospital/dispensaries for the federal government employees.

Though the two sites had been on offer, the health ministry had not responded to it so far, he said.