LAHORE: A number of officials on Tuesday kept the Lahore Fort closed for tourists reportedly for two hours in protest against the government for shifting its administrative/functional control to the Walled City of Lahore Authority from the archaeology department.

The situation turned embarrassing for the WCLA duty officials after a delegation from the US consulate paid a scheduled visit to the fort at the time when the archaeology staffers were protesting.

“Since the protesting employees, a majority of them live at their official residences/quarters there, had closed the main gate, the WCLA staff got the delegation members entered the fort through Roshnai gate adjacent to the food street,” the WCLA director (administration) told Dawn.

Chanting slogans against the government, the protesters termed the decision of handing over the fort’s administrative control to WCLA unlawful and unjustified.

They criticised the WCLA staff for allegedly misbehaving with them and their relatives and demanded that the government withdraw its notification that empowered WCLA to run the fort’s affairs.

Protests against shifting control to WCLA; US team’s visit prolonged

“If the government doesn’t accept our demands, we will close other historical places such as the Jehangir’s tomb,” one of the protesters said.

Commenting over the demonstration, WCLA Director Shahid Nadeem rejected the protesters’ stance. “It’s a matter of jealousy with the WCLA. The archaeology officials are unhappy with the government since it handed over the fort’s control to us a couple of months ago. We are doing a lot of conservation work here. And recently we have sent a PC-1 worth Rs738 million for several other works.”

He said according to a notification the government had transferred administrative control of the fort to WCLA that included a number of works related to conservation/construction, admin, approvals and other routine matters. And the gallery, museum and residences will remain under the control of the archaeology department, he added.

He said sometimes ago, a director of archaeology department wrote a letter, alleging that the WCLA staffers were involved in misbehaving with the archaeology officials and their relatives.

“On this, we probed the matter and learnt that the archaeology officials and their relatives were being stopped from sitting at the areas where development work was under way,” he said, adding that the archaeology director general had also sought explanation from his director for intervening in the WCLA affairs.

He said the Tuesday’s protest also forced the WCLA officials to prolong the duration of the visit of the US delegation for two hours.

The authority would soon send a letter to the government regarding this issue, Nadeem said.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2015

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