ISLAMABAD, Feb 8: As the people are gradually learning not to light up cigarettes in public areas, sports stadiums, hospitals and government offices, a tobacco giant is preparing for the grand opening of two upscale luxury lounges dedicated to smoking at the Parliament House on Friday.

The room is lined with tailored-made ashtrays from Greece and sophisticated equipment to filter cigarette smoke out of the building in seconds. Comforts are in abundance in these lounges on the first floor of the parliament building like large screen plasma televisions tuned to all channels, especially designed cozy leather seats and blow-ups of picturesque spots to save the smokers from the guilt that they are smoking inside country’s highest political forum where laws are made for the benefit of the public.

Speaker National Assembly Chaudhry Amir Hussain is expected to officially declare open the lounges for smoking. Director General Health Shahida Malik, chief operating officer Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) William Toh will also attend the ceremony.

A gift of the PTC for the lawmakers, these lounges will add the number of such smoking corners in the country to six with a clear message not to quit smoking since smokers will soon have similar spaces in other parts of the country soon.

“At least we have acted in a responsible way by politely asking the smokers, especially the politicians, not to openly smoke inside the parliament building rather restrict themselves to inside the lounges,” a senior representative of the tobacco company who wished not to be named told Dawn.

“You can at least appreciate the fact that the lounges have also not been branded by putting the logo of the company,” he said.

“This is all gimmickry,” said a doctor on condition of anonymity, deploring people would continue to be killed of cancers of lung, oral cavity, oesophagus, larynx, bladder, pancreases, kidney, stomach and blood because of the use of this silent killer.

All the three international airports at Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have designated smoking areas in addition to similar space in the Evacuee Trust building in Islamabad housing the PTC main office.

Though the initiative to dedicate separate smoking corners by none other than the tobacco industry seems to safeguard the interests of the non-smokers, the move is apparently aimed at creating soft corners among the lawmakers towards the industry by anticipating future tobacco regulations.

In 2002, the federal government banned smoking in public areas by promulgating the prohibition of smoking ordinance, but it is planning to impose a complete ban on smoking in public places by March 2007.

In compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court to take measures and arrest the epidemic of smoking, the federal government had dispatched guidelines to all the provincial health ministries to implement smoking ordinances in their respective provinces.