Islamabad, Srinagar highways: CDA, MCI have no landscaping plan

ISLAMABAD: Green and serene roads once the hallmark of Islamabad-the Beautiful are now reminiscent of bygone times, mainly due to slackness of the city managers, who have no landscaping plan even on papers for its two major highways, being used by thousands of motorists every day.

It is high time for the authorities concerned to carry out the beautification measures in the city, especially at 25-Kilometer (KM) Srinagar Highway and 28KM-Islamabad Expressway to ensure clean and green the environment on the major arteries, welcoming a whooping number of visitors from other cities. Currently, there are two civic authorities in the Federal Capital-the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MIC)-that ought to take eco-friendly and beautification initiatives in the city but both of them lacked a concrete beautification plan for both the arteries.

Talking to this agency, official sources in the MCI said that they had worked out several plans to make the capital clean and green including the installation of road furniture and tree plantation but most of them could not be materialised due to the paucity of funds. They said the MCI had planted more than 20 thousand plants along the highways recently, adding The survival rate for plantation on these roads are 67 per cent.

When asked about the reason behind the minimal numbers of trees despite their claim of massive plantations along the roads, they said the children of different localities came to play outside of their homes, would trample the planted saplings. About road furniture and other initiatives, the sources said it fell in the CDA s domain. Meanwhile, the sources in CDA said that the meeting over the issue had recently conducted by the competent authorities but There is no plan on papers at the moment for landscaping of Srinagar and Islamabad Highways. The department would soon draft a PC-I for carrying out beautification measures along Expressway, he stressed. Environmentalist Iqabal Khaliq said that the highway built after 60s to connect the federal capital with Rawalpindi, Grand Trunk (GT) road and other intra-city major thoroughfares gradually lost their beauty due to mushrooming housing societies along road. The expressway which welcomed its commuters with a scenic view of Margalla Hills till the dawn of the 21st century had also hidden behind the tall buildings which were built illegally by some elements, he alleged. He said some 20 years ago, a commuter on Islamabad Expressway was supposed to receive cool winds in the summer season due to high number of long and green trees which were unfortunately removed by builders.