*Govt decision to fell 1,600 trees for canal-widening project irks environmentalists
*Lawyer Rafay Alam says project violates Lahore Canal Heritage Park Act 2013, criticises TEPA, LDA for failing to come up with plan solution to end Lahore’s traffic woes
The Lahore Development Authority (LDA)’s plan to build a new underpass along Canal Bank Road near Dharampura besides relocating two underpasses on Jail Road and Ferozepur Road will result in felling of 1,600 trees, much to the alarm of environmentalists who have time and again raised concerns over the ever-growing air pollution in Lahore.
The newly-proposed canal widening project – including construction of a new underpass under the two railway crossings after Dharampura – along the 28 kilometre-long stretch from Thokar Niaz Baig to Jallo has raised many eyebrows and has been termed by environmentalists as “at best, (an) ad hoc solution to the traffic problems” of the city.
Talking to Pakistan Today, Rafay Alam – a lawyer who was also associated with the Lahore Bachao Tehreek – criticised LDA and its subsidiary Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency (TEPA) for not having a master plan to overcome the city’s traffic woes.
“Whilst the Lahore Canal Heritage Park Act 2013 was passed following billions of rupees of government spending for a decade on haphazard infrastructural development along the canal in the previous decade, the city still lacks a transport master plan,” said Alam, who is also part of an advisory committee on canal widening formed by the government to look into the matter.
“To expect the committee to decide on hundreds of millions of rupees worth further infrastructural development in the absence of a proper master plan and in the face of repeated failures of existing infrastructure to resolve traffic congestion is severely misplaced,” said Alam.
He further said that the committee has no evidence to suggest that the proposed traffic infrastructural developments will respond to traffic challenges in the city as none of the previous endeavours of infrastructural development have eliminated the city’s traffic problems.
Moreover, the Lahore canal has been declared as a heritage park in the Lahore Canal Heritage Park Act. This protects the canal, its banks and green belts on either side as a heritage park. “This is the first heritage park of its kind in the history of Pakistan and the Heritage Park Act itself is the result of a decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (2011 SCMR 1743) and the activism by Lahore’s civil society,” said Alam.
Section 5(A) of the Act wholly prohibits construction or other infrastructure development work along the canal and its green belts except with the written permission of the Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA).
TEPA Chief Engineer Saifurehman, LDA Director General Ahad Cheema and PHA officials did not respond to repeated attempts by Pakistan Today.
