Islamabad is losing its green character because of an increased number of new avenues. The green belts were initially replaced with roads like 7th and 9th avenues.

Soil erosion close to 7th avenue is being seen with concern by environmentalists of the city. It shows the direct impact of development projects on the city environment.

A portion of the service road located behind Beverly Centre has caved in.

For the last five months the Capital Development Authority (CDA), according to one resident is filling the caved portion of the road but could not finish the work.

“Initially a patch of road caved in a few months back and we did register a complaint with the civic authority but they never paid any heed to it,” said Naeem Ahmed a resident of sector F-6/3.

The commuters are also facing trouble while crossing this patch since the CDA’s road management failed to display any warning signs. The patch of road, according to one official of CDA, was filled with rocks and was re-carpeted  “This is soil erosion which has caused the road to cave in and continuous deforestation in the area alongside 7th avenue is the reason for it,” observed an environmentalist working for Environment Protection Agency of Pakistan.

An environmentalist, Ms Shahida Farooq, told Dawn: “The civic agency has failed to plant new trees while placing fake sign boards on these avenues claiming that CDA have planted new plants after removing thousands of trees from greenbelts which were replaced with 7th and 9th avenue roads.”

Ms Farooq asserted that soil erosion close to 7th avenue is one example indicating that Islamabad is losing its green character.

The authority’s officials managing the soil erosion road project made excuses when Dawn approached one of the officials for comments.

The road engineering wing official, while refusing to share his name, added: “The patch of this service road on Nazimuddin Road mainly caved in because of Nullah crossing beneath the road.”

“The soil is continuously eroding since this Nullah flows during rain storm and damages the intermittent gravel filling of the road,” said the official.

The official maintained that they were hopeful that this time “our road engineers have filled the caved patch with concrete and hopefully the service road will be smooth and the work will be complete in a few weeks time.”

Regarding the complaints, the official admitted that CDA department had received a number of complaints from residents of sector F-6 and commuters and “we were equally concerned.”

Both, the spokesman for the authority and the CDA chairman Farkhand Iqbal were not available to comment on the current land erosion phenomena started close to 7th avenue road.