Residents of the twin cities are facing severe difficulties in burying their dead due to a shortage of graveyards. The Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat and Inter Provincial Coordination directed the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) in its last meeting to increase graveyard land in the capital to three percent, and to look into the matter of arranging the land for graveyards in rural areas. However, a similar situation in Rawalpindi is ignored as neither the federal and provincial governments and nor any local administration is paying heed to the issue even though residents are now being compelled to bury their dead in older graves.
There are 53 graveyards in the city of Rawalpindi, of which 31 are in the municipal area while the remaining 22 are located in the cantonment areas. Besides these small graveyards, there is only one planned graveyard located near Dhamial Village, which was completed in 1997 when the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was in power. The graveyard is some 25 kilometers away from the city, making it inaccessible for most of the residents. Several people have reserved land in the graveyards in the city while the remaining residents face an acute shortage of space. In total, all of the graveyards in the city occupy about 308 acres of land, which amounts to just 1.79 per cent of the city’s total area.
Several residents from different localities of Rawalpindi told Pakistan Today that most graveyards were established by the local inhabitants and remain under the control of local ‘mohalla’ (neighbourhood) committees, and that these committees allow burial only to those who pay for the upkeep ‘mohalla’ graveyard.
Negligence on the part of the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and the Rawal Town Municipal Administration (RTMA) is one of the reasons that this problem has become so acute as neither authorities looked into this matter while developing several housing societies. Sources in the RDA told Pakistan Today that it was the responsibility of the RDA ‘high-ups’ to allocate enough land for graveyards in every residential area. Now however, said the official, the whole matter is in the hands of the provincial government, “If the government directs the local administration to work on the expansion of graveyards, the local administration would immediately start work on this project.”
Encroachments on graveyards lands due to the absence of proper boundary walls and the collusion of authorities with private builders in this regard has further aggravated the situation. There are now increasing incidents of the desecration of old graves as new graves replace them.
An RTMA spokesman Tahir Mehmood Khan told Pakistan Today that it was actually the responsibility of the local administration to provide land for graveyards but as land was not available now, the local administration ‘couldn’t do anything’. He added that the RDA had been approving the plans of housing societies and ensuring that there is land for graveyards in them. He ruled out the impression that there was any fault in the planning of the city.
However, the RTMA spokesman believed that the provincial government should look into the matter. He suggested that the adjoining areas of the twin cities, I.J Principal Road and Shakrial, have greenbelts which could be converted into graveyards. “If the provincial government financially assists the administration, we can even buy the land from the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for a graveyard,” the spokesman said, adding that neither the greenbelts nor ‘any green image’ would be affected by the allocation of the land for the graveyard.
