ISLAMABAD: An army of CDA workers moved in to clean the Constitution Avenue on Wednesday as PAT workers ended their dharna there and started moving out.

CDA sanitary workers arrived with their brooms and street cleaning machinery soon after the PAT leadership called off its 67-day-old anti-government sit-in at the broad, leafy and venerated avenue late Tuesday night.

“Though they have not vacated all the area – some tents are still pitched there - our workers have begun cleaning the section between the Supreme Court and D-Chowk,” said the CDA spokesman Asim Khichi.

Around 160 sanitary workers, with five trolleys and two blades, are busy at clearing the avenue and its green belts. And two tankers were waiting to wash down the avenue once the sanitary staff had finished its work.

“But the main work will be cleaning the area from the D-Chowk to the PTV headquarters as majority of tents were erected in this part,” said the CDA spokesman.

This is the area where the parallel dharna of Imran Khan of PTI will be continuing. But its participants are not camped there and assemble only in the evenings to listen to their leader and the music that supplement his daily speeches.

In any case, the grand Constitution Avenue, lined with buildings symbolising the state power, is promised by the environment wing of the CDA to be cleared of all tents of the PAT sit-in by noon Thursday and the garbage the campers left behind by Friday.

Finally, fumigation will follow to restore the Constitution Avenue to its old glory.

Damage to its green belts and kerb stones will be assessed later. “Relaying damaged flower beds, grass or trees won’t be an issue, but it would involve major expenditure if the water sprinklers system of the median of the Constitution Avenue is found damaged,” an official of the environment wing said, explaining that seasonal pruning of the flora was due any way.

After restoring the Constitution Avenue, the CDA plans a similar cleanup operation at the adjoining old Embassy Road area. It also suffered extensive littering at hands of the participants of the two dharnas as well as the police and other law enforcement agencies camped there to deal with them.

Meanwhile, minister of state for interior Balighur Rehman told the Senate on Wednesday that the sit-ins set back work on the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metro Bus project by six months.

“The contractors have said that the protesters were sitting at the site and no work has been executed,” the minister said.

But Hanif Abbassi, chairman of the committee overseeing metro bus, calculated a delay of one month and also allayed the other fear of a cost escalation.

A former PML-N MNA, Mr Abbasi told Dawn that the project will be completed at original estimated cost of Rs44 billion. “However, the contractors have been granted an extra month to complete the project. We will not accept any compensation claims, though,” he said.

However, an official of the project executing agency, the Rawalpindi Development Authority, said that the contractor ‘ZKB’ has demanded a compensation of Rs100 million in terms of material losses and delays.

Under the contract the project was to be completed by December 24, 2014.

On the other hand the contractors complained that while the time lost was more than two months, the Punjab government extended the completion date by only one month. It is less likely that the project would be completed by the end of January 2015.

“There was severe shortage of raw material because the movement of heavy machinery was restricted in Islamabad and work proceeded at almost one fourth of the pace we had originally estimated,” said Chaudhry Amir Latif, contractor for the bus project section from Peshawar Mor to F-8.

However, the situation was even worse for the subsequent sections as no work could be undertaken on the Jinnah Avenue.

Since, there are no thick forests or mosques at Constitution Avenue the deep and wide trenches dug for the movement of buses were used as open air latrines by the participants of PAT dharna who had been living there for almost two months.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2014