06 August 2000	Sunday	05 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1421

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IN the early 1970s, our then worthy President, the great leader of the awam "had given directives to the Government of Sindh that development in Karachi should take place in a planned way and no effort should be spared to ensure recreational facilities for the people of Karachi...".

"One of the special assignments over the replanning of Kehkashan, KDA Scheme No.5, Clifton, was the prime objective of developing it as a recreational complex.... It is a matter of satisfaction that the Town Planning Department of KDA has studied the problem in depth and come out with a Revised Concept Plan fulfilling the broad objectives in view. The revised scheme was presented to the President on December 5, 1972 and was finally approved by him for implementation."

So read the foreword to a colourful brochure presented by Sindh's minister of housing and town planning, formidable devastator Jam Sadiq Ali of Sanghar to the peoples' president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The scheme reserved an area of 132 acres for the main park of the city, which was to extend down to the sea from the parade built by that generous Parsi philanthropist Jehangir Kothari, and it was named Bagh-i-Ibn-Qasim. The acreage was to contain amusement parks, recreational facilities, restaurants, refreshment stalls, swimming pools, ponds, rock and formal gardens, fountains and roller skating rink. Space was also reserved for the construction of a revolving restaurant atop an observation tower.

Ever since the inception of this scheme it has been beset by marauding builders and unscrupulous developers ably assisted by our successive corrupt governments whose last thought has been for the preservation of the environment of the city or for the benefit of its people. The land use of many an amenity plot, or plots reserved for parks and public buildings, has been widely arbitrarily and illegally changed. Residential areas have been wholly commercialized and in flagrant violation of all rules and regulations highrises and shopping complexes have arisen where they were never intended to rise.

Large scale irrevocable damage was done between 1988 to 1990 during the second PPP government under Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the peoples' president. The blame for the wholesale desecration of Karachi must lie squarely on her head, that of her husband and of his crony Agha Siraj Durrani appointed as minister of housing and town planning.

After the elections that followed the first dismissal of Benazir, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan appointed as chief minister of Sindh the man wanted by the Zia government for his many crimes who had been brought back from exile, the Jam of Sanghar. Jam was a likeable rogue and when I complained to him about his indiscriminate validation of all building permissions which had been invalidated, noting on all the files TDo so as a special case.' He used to tell me that I would remain for ever a fool and point to a loaded brief case and with a loud guffaw explain, that is a special case !"

During Benazir's first round, the Bagh-i-Ibn-Qasim space reserved for constructing the observation tower with its revolving restaurant on top ended up by being allotted to Asif Zardari's cronies, Dr Zulfikar Mirza and his relatives and members of the Kazi Abid family. They decided to build a highrise complex and the drawings showed a restaurant of sorts perched thereon. Barrister Naim-ur-Rahman was aroused, the people went to court, starting with the Sindh High Court and moving on to the Supreme Court. After a nine year fight, it was in 1999 that the Supreme Court finally decided that the highrise complex could not be constructed on the observation tower plot and that what had been built should be demolished. The builders were given the option to provide a design for the construction of a proper tower. This they have done, trying to save what has been built, but it has not been approved by the present government. Orders have been passed for the demolition of what stands, but this has not been started as various excuses have been brought into play.

The sketch drawn to scale shows what the world has done by way of constructing observation towers:

Silhouette 1, the 553 metre CN Tower, Toronto;
2, the 540 m. Ostankino Tower, Moscow;
3, the 450 (not 540 as marked in the sketch) m. Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur;
4, the 443 m. Empire State Building, New York ;
5, the 421 m. KL Menara Tower, Kuala Lumpur ;
6, the 375 m. Tashkent Tower, Tashkent;
7, the 368 m. Fernsehturm, Berlin ;
8, the 350 m. Stratosphere Tower, Las Vegas ;
9, the 333 m. Tokyo Tower, Tokyo;
10, the 320 m. Eiffel Tower, Paris ;
11, the 304 m. Sydney Tower, Sydney;
12, the 290 Olympia Tower, Munich ;
13, the 288 m. Barcelona Tower, Barcelona;
14, the 253 m. Rialto, Melbourne;
15, the 252 m. Donauturm, Vienna;
16, the 237 m. Seoul Tower, Seoul;
17, the 200 m. Cancun Tower, Mexico;
18, the 195 m. Telecom Tower, Canberra;
19, the 189 m. BT Tower, London;
20, the 185 m. Euromast, Rotterdam;
21, the 181 m. Latinoamericana, Mexico;
22, the 175 m. Olympic Tower, Montreal;
23, the 158 m. Blackpool Tower, England;
24, the latest design submitted by the builders, the 33 m. Costa Livina Tower, Progressive Pakistan.