The demarcation of world famous cultural heritage site of Mohen-jo-Daro has not yet been carried out resulting in illegal encroachments around its land by the influential land grabbers.
The dry core drilling (DCD) project is in doldrums for which six months time was given to complete its first phase. The Sindh culture and tourism department thinks that it has fulfilled its legal obligations by floating tender advertisements five times in the newspapers, but practically almost nothing has been done as yet in this regard.
PPP Patron-in-Chief (at that time) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had inaugurated DCD project over a year ago on April 04, 2014, with a cost of Rs 8.7 million to ascertain the depth and limits of this ancient site for which UNESCO had been demanding since 2006 and find out valuable historic ruins.
After tenders, some companies participated and few of them were awarded contracts but, according to an official of the department, they could not submit required bore samples, hence the department cancelled their contracts. Some of the experts have already opined that this contract should be given to foreign companies in view of their long experience so that buffer zone could be established as per the requirement of UNESCO.
The Mohenjo Daro technical committee member, which was formed by the culture department and known German expert architect Prof Michael Johnson, has already given his suggestion that DCD contract may be given to foreign expert companies keeping in view the seriousness of the site and ruins, but the Sindh government is showing no serious attitude to save this historic site.
Sources said that UNESCO had issued several warnings previously to Pakistan and the Sindh governments to carry out demarcation and establish buffer zone; otherwise the name of Mohen-jo-Daro could be excluded from its list of world heritage sites, but despite world body’s SOS no notice has so far been taken which is why influential encroachers have become very active to occupy the precious land of Indus valley. This also shows that rulers are not serious about saving this 5000-year-old civilization of Sindh.
I hope logical reasoning makes the government change its mind before it is too late and thousands of years of ancient history is lost forever by the powerful and greedy land grabbers! It is no less than the IS destroying Syrian pre-history permanently!!
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