KARACHI, Oct 29: Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Defence, Senator Nisar Memon, has called for execution of the proposed Diamond City mega project to develop a modern city on the twin islands – Bundal and Dingi – with the consent of concerned stakeholders.
He was talking to newsmen during a visit along with a team of journalists in a boat to the surroundings of the twin islands, situated in south east of Korangi Creek on Sunday. He said that the objective of the tour was to know the facts about the islands and communicate the same to the authorities concerned to ensure execution of the project on real grounds. He said that deliberations should also be made to decide the issues relating to the land ownership of the islands.
Senator Nisar Memon observed that the stride of government to develop the islands as a modern city was indeed a remarkable step but the stand point of the concerned stakeholders, especially local fishermen, about the proposed project was equally important.
He said that the fishermen community had expressed apprehension that the project would cast negative impacts on their employment. He said fishermen believed that a total of 17 major and minor creeks were meant for their livelihood.
He said that environmental concerns expressed by stakeholders, including expected damages to ecology and marine life due to execution of the project, were also needed to be addressed.
The senator called for deciding the matter pertaining to the ownership of these twin islands and said that information about the same should be made public. He said that free access to information was a key which if made public enabled people to understand the reasons for making the particular decision by the government on certain matters.
An agreement was recently inked between the federal government and a Dubai-based firm ‘Emaar’ to develop the twin islands in shape of a new city of international standard on the threshold of Port Qasim. The proposed mega project costing about 43 billion dollars will take 15 years to complete.
Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum Chairman Muhammad Ali Shah, former MPA Hakeem Baloch, former chairman of Fishermen Cooperative Society, Shafi Muhammad Jamote, and MPA M. Alam Jamote also accompanied the senator during his visit.Earlier, Senator Nisar Memon visited the National Institute of Child Health and observed that the hospital was rendering unmatched services in providing modern treatment facilities to ailing children.
“Sindh province needs to have more such hospitals where ratio of diseases among children is higher with non-availability of health care of required quality,” he said.
At the hospital, he was briefed in detail about the facilities being provided at the NICH and its future plans.
He was informed that NICH was the first children’s hospital in the country established in 1972. It is a teaching tertiary care hospital working under the federal ministry of health. It was told that the NICH started working as a 100-bed hospital and now it had 435 beds with several different specialities like round-the-clock emergency services, ICU, burns unit, dialysis and renal unit, cancer ward, new born babies ward, endocrine department, two paediatric surgical units, three paediatric medical units, out-patient department, pathology department, radiology department and anaesthesia department.
Senator Nisar Memon was told that new facilities were being introduced such as MRI, modern operation theatres besides expansion in dialysis services, state-of-the-art pathology department, cytogenetic lab, chest and pulmonary unit.—APP