The Capital Development Authority (CDA) is responsible for overall planning, provision and supervision of public health services, environment laws, municipal services, garbage collection, building code standards and building bylaws, public safety standards, road construction and maintenance.
The civic body, despite having gigantic infrastructure, has failed to fulfil its responsibilities, which is not only creating problems for citizens but also affecting the beauty of Islamabad. The CDA is unable to properly implement its environment and building bylaws and establish proper garbage collection system. It is even failed to control throwing of trash and littering in open spaces, park and streets.
The authority have spent over Rs 50 million on anti-littering derive in the last few months moths, but public spaces, including Fatima Jinah Park and Damn-e-Koh, give the impression that there is no one to provide the basic municipal service while wall-chalking portray an ugly picture of the only planned city of the country. Littering in Islamabad is a crime under Section 5(29) of CDA Environment Protection Regulation 2008 and violators can be fined from Rs 50 to Rs 300 on the spot.
“We want to make Islamabad beautiful, like other capital cities of the world,” CDA Chairman Imtiaz Inayat Elahi said while speaking at a briefing on the much-publicised “anti-litter” campaign that the civic agency launched in April. But despite the tall claims of the CDA’s high ups, the authority is yet to give a practical shape to the initiative.
The CDA has launched several campaigns time to time to ban this unethical practice but the situation gets back to square one, if not the worse, soon after end of the operation due to poor monitoring and lack of interest of the directorates concerned.
The main reason of failure is that the civic agency’s bosses only warn the citizens of stern action but do not materialise the promises due to certain reasons. Ironically, the CDA bosses themselves are oblivious of their prime responsibility. The authority has no dumping site, while absence of an inadequate waste collection mechanism complicates the problem.
Similarly, throwing juice packets and plastic bottles in recreational spots causes nuisance and earn a bad name for the residents.
A CDA official said under Section 5(29) of CDA Environmental Protection Regulations 2008, a person or persons would be fined for violating anti-littering law within the federal capital and be charged with Rs. 50 to Rs 300 fine on the spot. It also covers the violation of building laws relating to the environment that includes wall chalking, damaging green areas, landscape, trees, plants by grazing or keeping animals or by parking vehicles or dumping debris, discharge of any dangerous chemical in drains, watercourses or public land, supply of contaminated drinking water, irrigation of crops with sewer water, cleaning of vehicle or release of water on road, sale of unsafe drinks and eatables, establishment of brick kilns.
If CDA failed to take action against the individuals for littering then how it take action against the factories discharging hazardous emissions, effluent, organic or inorganic wastes causing air, land or water pollution.
Being the only planned and beautiful city in the country, Islamabad does not have a garbage dumping site. The CDA shifted the temporary dumping site from H-12 to I-14, but it has not put in place a permanent solution to this problem. Its waste carrying trucks unload garbage in rural areas, polluting the environment. Around 1,700 units of garbage collection have been established across the city mostly near schools, parks, mosques and low-laying residential areas.
