BAHAWALPUR: The central minaret, studded with four big clocks, atop the building of more than a century-old Sadiq Dane High School is in a rundown condition.

Thanks to indifference of the the archaeology department and provincial and district administrations, the heritage and identity of the Nawab of Bahawalpur today stands as a symbol of decrepitude.

No serious effort has been made over the years to repair these clocks and tower. According to the school headmaster, Muhammad Aslam Saqib, the institution has no funds for the repair of the clocks and tower. A student had managed to get one of the clocks repaired a few years ago but it could not operate for long, he said.

In 2006, he said, the district government had sanctioned Rs4.5 million to carry out renovation and restoration of the historic building but no one bothered about the clocks and tower.

As the British Watch Company “Big Ban” stood disbanded, he said, these clocks could be replaced with new ones. “There is an urgent need to preserve the local heritage and restore it for the coming generations,” he said.

Some concerned citizens raised the issue when the Punjab government recently constructed a clock tower in Lahore.

The building of the S.D. High School was completed in 1906 when the first-ever college in the defunct State’s jurisdiction from Bahawalpur to Sadiqabad and Mandi Mcleod Ganj in Bahawalnagar district was opened here. It was named after the late Nawab Muhammad Sadiq Khan Abbasi and Robert Egerton, the then Lt Governor of Punjab. Later on in 1952-53 after the shifting of this college from here, this building was handed over to the S. D. High School, which was shifted from the adjacent (existing) Government Technical High School.

The building’s clock tower was in good shape and its four clocks functioned probably till 1975. Some former employees of the school claim that the clocks went out of order some time before 1977.

Meanwhile, it is learnt, some government institutions and individuals have grabbed land and five residences attached with the school. These illegal occupants have opened their cattle pens in these residential quarters under the nose of the district administration while the school’s children of primary classes are deprived of rooms and are forced to sit under the shade of trees in extreme weather conditions.

The school administration has been fighting its case for the last more than 12 years for the vacation of encroached land.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2014