ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has stayed the federal government from building a cancer hospital on the land of Argentina Park in Sector G-6.

Justice Athar Minallah issued the restraining order on Tuesday on a petition moved by Islamabad citizen Yasmin Haider. The court asked the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Ministry of National Health Services, the petitioner named as respondents, not to implement the proposed cancer hospital plan till the pendency of the case.

Petitioner’s counsel Dr Mohammad Aslam Khakki argued before the court that the hospital plan calls for occupying about 20 kanals of the popular Argentina Public Park, situated opposite the Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH), commonly known as Polyclinic.

The addition of yet another hospital by encroaching upon the Argentina Park, in a thickly-populated area with health and traffic issues, will further aggravate the problems of health, traffic and lack of entertainment, said the petition.

It added that even otherwise, facilities like health must be provided to the people nearer home. There is already a concentration of hospitals in the central area of Islamabad like the Polyclinic, CDA Hospital, Pims, in addition to a large number of private hospitals, the petition said.

The park was named after Argentina on May 25, 1973, in recognition of the support the Latin American country extended to Pakistan in the United Nations Security Council and in the United Nations General Assembly in the backdrop of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan.

Dr Khaki said the government of Argentina funded the development of the park by the CDA as a gesture of friendship between the peoples of the two countries.

It was developed for the specific purpose of providing a green, healthy environment to the people of the area, and those visiting the patients in the Polyclinic, to relax in. If the park is abolished, the counsel argued, “it will deprive the people and families, especially children, of their right to physical exercise, morning walk and to relax and enjoy clean oxygen-laden air.”

Destruction of the park will also hurt the feelings in Argentina which had gifted it to the citizens of Islamabad, he said.

As for the cancer hospital, the petition suggested the government can build it elsewhere, the Rawal Lake area, Bhahra Kahu, Tarnol, E-11 northern strip - even the F-9 Park.

The people of Bhara Kahu, Tarnol, Sangjani, Rawat etc have to travel long distances to get the medical treatment. These and other outlying localities are discriminated against in the allocation of funds for health facilities and deserve to be looked after, the counsel said.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2015

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