AS announced in the headline over a news item in this newspaper on February 7, ‘The Supreme Court puts public interest over private profit.’ The previous day, a three-member bench led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry cancelled a lease awarded by the Capital Development Authority to a Lahore businessman who had planned to develop a mini-golf club in a public park in Sector F-7, Islamabad.
The chief justice stressed that the laws of the CDA are clear: public parks, graveyards, incidental open spaces, etc., will be developed by the authority only and he advised the CDA that if it allowed people to haphazardly start commercial activities in public spaces it would “repent not adhering to its original policy.”
Now, the ocean foreshore of Karachi is the heritage of all Pakistanis, including our future generations, held as a public trust by the government of the day. It is non-sustainable; once it is gone, it is gone. The city’s population is increasing by 500,000 a year. We need all our beaches to cater for increased recreational needs.
Beaches are not a luxury. They are public spaces that provide a different set of rhythms for the renewal of public life. Beaches are democratic commons that bring people together to stroll, to paddle, swim, splash in the waves, ‘watch’ the surf, and gaze into the sunset. Public access to the beach is integral to democracy and equality.
Karachi is almost destitute of parks and playgrounds and open spaces. It has fewer acres of such spaces per 1,000 residents as compared to any major city in the developed world. There are also vast disparities in the access to parks and recreation. In middle and low-income areas citizens do not have, near enough, open spaces in their neighbourhoods — but they do have more than their fair share of toxic waste and pollutants. The middle and lower-income groups, to be able to breathe, throng to our public beaches on public holidays and weekends.
What atrocity has already been perpetrated on the Clifton beach? The city government has built two parallel parapets which hide the sea from public view. Parapets are normally hip-high as were the parapets built by Sir Jehangir Kothari in 1912, still standing for all to emulate. What our city government, obsessed with size, has built is head-high. Why? Could it be to enrich the brick makers and layers? The factotums responsible need to do something to rectify this folly. How the citizens have reacted can be gauged from the number of letters to the editors of all our newspapers that have appeared in print, all objecting strongly to the fact that the sea has been obliterated from the much vaunted park by the sea.
And further folly from our MQM Minister for Ports & Shipping, Babar Ghauri. Whilst once in Jeddah on one of the many ‘official’ visits our ministers indulge in, he spotted a water jet spouting high into the air in front of the royal palaces. In search of glory, he ordered the Karachi Port Trust to have it replicated in Karachi’s sea, without bothering about how much it would cost to purchase, instal and operate. Who has it enriched, and on which continent? Ghauri’s approach is totally in line with the ministerial norm, but what we must have difficulty in believing is that not one of the dozen or so KPT trustees, who hold the people’s money in trust, recorded a note of dissent.
It was ‘wah-wah, minister sahib’ all the way — there was not one man amongst them. This has also enraged a large number of citizens who have publicly in print expressed their disgust — one excellent thing is that now people are becoming aware of their rights and of their government’s extravaganzas and waste of public funds and are loudly and clearly voicing their discontent.
Now to the real danger. In April 2005, five concerned citizens of the Defence Housing Authority approached the Sindh High Court (CP 403/05) seeking to save a section of the beach, the 13-acre ‘Usmani Park’ (between Beach Avenue and the sea) from being converted into a gigantic shopping, entertainment and residential project. In January 2006, the NGO Shehri intervened in the petition and has placed a number of facts on record. It has been pointed out that if the DHA is allowed to get away with this ‘privatization’ of the public beach, it will not be too long before attempts are made to exploit and privatize the other few amenities, spaces and facilities that are left to us — even perhaps the very air we breathe.
The petition states that the sea-shore conversion project is in violation of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997. Increased commercialization will cause pollution, destroy marine micro-organisms, and will result in the extinction or mass reduction of fish, turtles, and coastal birds, and also in the depletion of the sea-food industry. Additionally, a Sindh government notification of May 1975 prohibits the leasing of land within the area of the ports or sea shore limits. The beaches around the DHA are within the port limits of the Karachi Port Trust and the Port Qasim Authority.
DHA has a grand plan to convert 14 km of “virgin, unspoilt (sic) waterfront” (quoted in a DHA newsletter) into a $-600 million series of playgrounds and leisure/pleasure spots called the “DHA Waterfront Development Project” to afford the rich and affluent of Karachi “the luxuries of an aristocratic life”. This extravaganza consists of seven Zones (A to G) with expensive commercial, entertainment, residential, commercial, hotel and office buildings, and includes “reclamation of 74.5 acres of land, for high-end Hotel Complex”, “5-star hotels owning private segments of the beach” and a “private beach with lagoon for hotel & residential blocks”.
Apparently, various MOUs have been entered into with local and foreign parties to ‘privatize’ and ‘develop’ the seashore. Such extravaganzas will disenfranchise 95 per cent of the residents of Karachi from over 30 per cent of the 42-km urban beachfront of their city.
In the Zone-A, Usmani Park plot, three structures, have been planned for construction by a developer: a five-storey (900,000 sq ft) shopping mall and entertainment complex with hyper-market, cineplex, ice-skating rink, food court, retail shops, gaming arcade, and so on; a 50-storey commercial office tower, and a 50-storey hotel and apartment tower. In keeping with the norm, no thought has been given to the traffic and parking chaos that will be generated, nor of the unbearable load on the utilities — water, electricity and sewerage, etc. Additionally, the view of the sea of all houses along Beach Avenue will be blocked.
In December 2005, the DHA invited expressions of interest for development of a 48-acre recreational Zone-B (located between MacDonald’s and Kinara restaurants, in front of Seaview Apartments) which includes a 600-ft. high ‘Monumental Tower’ and an amphitheatre on reclaimed land.
Public access to the beach is protected under the public trust doctrine. Beaches enjoy a special amenity status with all the protection that the law affords to public amenity land. In recent years, the protests of citizens about the commercialization of beaches along the Clifton sea-shore and beyond have been mounting, but are totally ignored by the rapaciously greedy DHA and the concerned government authorities.
The outcome of the petition will determine whether or not only the rich and powerful have the right to the benefit of the Almighty’s bounty and will establish whether or not the wealthy and influential can usurp for their selfish private use a natural facility and resource that should by right be enjoyed by each and every citizen without distinction.
arfc@cyber.net.pk