A unique community move to clean Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: A foreigner wife of a capital resident has unintentionally set in motion a unique movement in Islamabad which might end up changing overall Pakistani attitude towards cleanliness in their neighborhood.

It all started unintentionally. One fine day in September 2017, Muhammad Salman, a retired government officer living in I-8/3- was walking outside his home when he spotted a foreign looking lady doing something extremely unusual at Kachnar Park.

“This affluent looking lady was holding a large plastic bag in her hand and she was picking rubbish from this vast yet extremely ignored park all alone. I was shocked to see this and frankly felt a little embarrassed too,” said Muhammad Salman a government officer living in I-8/3. 

When he asked the lady, who originally came to Pakistan from Australia, about her ambitious plan to clean the 1.2 kilometer long park all alone she smiled and said: “I feel it is our civic duty to do our bit for cleanliness of the park”.

Next day Salman joined her in picking Rubbish from the park which had turned into a large waste dump- thanks to the ignorance of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the civic body which manages Parks in Islamabad. Later it was revealed that the civic body had hired as many as 40 employees from the tax-payers money to maintain the park. However the stench coming out of waste spread across the park, the wild untrimmed grass, broken lights, unmanaged washrooms and rusty benches were telling another story.

Kachnar Park was created 10 years ago and was one of the most beautiful parks of the Federal Capital until 2015. Since then it had deteriorated. Cleanliness has been one of the major problems due to lack of rubbish bins and dumping of household waste at many locations.

Within a week of the meeting between Salman and Australian lady, who wished not to be named, there were half a dozen volunteer with plastic bags in their hands all determine to clean their park without waiting for CDA’s help. Soon there were dozen and then the number crossed 100. 

Today the park has over 200 volunteers comprising doctors, professors, journalists, government servants and businessmen who come to the park at least once a week to clean it up. The Australian lady and her husband have donated litter picker for the volunteers but soon the volunteers outnumbered the instruments and now they had to import more tools with the money donated by the volunteers which have formed a body called Friends of Kachnar Park (FKP).

They have created a dedicated Facebook page and a Twitter handle to share the pictures, videos and news about their activities.

The volunteers not only clean the park on Sundays they also make efforts to beautify the park. Thousands of flowers and fruit plants have been donated since then by residents for plantation in the park. The benches are being coloured and street lights are being restored. Ever since inception six months ago, the volunteer body FKP has gathered over 800 large rubbish-bags of litter from the park, Salman said. Their message is simple, “please put your trash in a bin or simply take it home!”

Now the senior “Friends of Kachnar Park” have established networking with the CDA to bring the park back to its former glory and improve the infrastructure so that it could be a “Model”park” for the entire country. Already the park has been revamped significantly. Most of the street-lights are now working. The polls and benches have been coloured by volunteers with donated paint.

The park has become a Centre of activity for the entire population. It is now hosting healthy activities for kids, women and adults. Last week it celebrated a spring festival for Children hosting colorful events involving people from all ages. In June the park will celebrate the World Environment Day” (WED). This year the theme is “Beat Plastic Pollution” and Friends of Kachnar Park have already started by promoting a sustainable cotton shopping bag instead of plastic bags.

“This is an excellent example of a community initiative” and we hope the word will spread and more sectors and cities will follow our example” Salman said proudly. Last month the volunteers of the park visited a nearby park with pick up tools and trash bags and cleaned the entire park within few hours. They used megaphones to urge the other resident to join this noble cause and make Islamabad and Pakistan clean and healthy.