New Murree? Mercy Lords

JANUARY 2004 - I suppose other than the three people who read this column, it can be safely assumed that the rest are not the least bit concerned if the environment is going to the dogs – though I don’t quite subscribe to that idiom. Dogs are perfectly fine and going to them is a good thing, which more of us should do, more often. There is cheerful news in these days of back breaking fevers, racking coughing fits and full blown influenza attacks and that comes to us courtesy the good lads at the Punjab Assembly who wasted little time in passing a Bill which will have a devastating impact on the country’s declining environmental standards – but hey, who is worried?

Under this farsighted and revolutionary legislation, we will have a new Murree City in less time than it takes to say bingo. New Murree City, ye gods help us please, will be established in all its grotesque ugliness over 3,000 acres of what is now hillsides still boasting a spread of pines, Deodars, Chirs and other varieties of trees. This new Punjab eyesore when it is done will have devoured over 100,000 trees, both old and new. Although what we have left under forests is laughable at best seeing that cutting down trees and burning entire forests is high on the agenda of every red blooded Muslim of Pakistan, the mass murder of over 100,000 trees promises to be an environmental disaster whose impact and importance I sincerely doubt has crossed the limited gray matter of the best of Punjab’s legislators. What they have happily and in their permanent state of slumber, approved with great gusto will change the very environment, not of the blessed new Murree or the old, dilapidated shanty town of the same name, but many cities, towns and entire areas that will lie affected. For people who are genetically incapable of thinking beyond the current three seconds, something that will affect the future is as remote and as irrelevant as shaking hands with a farmer of Bolivia under the full moon. Murree and Kahuta hills are covered with coniferous forests over an area of almost 50,000 acres. With New Murree becoming the ugly reality that undoubtedly it will, a monument to bad taste, blobs of cement and garish colours, almost 6% of these grand forests will have been eradicated forever. The authorities have made the usual appropriate soothing noises that ecological balances will be retained, but we have all heard these before and understand from bitter experience that eclectic things like fine balance are notions about which there is no room in the new Pakistan. The draft law regarding establishment of this new hill resort and the setting up of an independent authority to manage it, was approved by the Punjab cabinet in October last year. Early this year the draft law stands approved. In between, there has been no information made public as to what this is all about and while experts are already sounding alarms about the sanity of this new move, there is indifferent silence from all around.

Consider the disturbing questions about the validity of raising another city in the Murree hills. There have been repeated reports prepared by those who have little to gain from stakes in property development that the issue of landslides in the Murree hills has reached a point of no return. Some of these studies go back to the 1980s and some are more recent. The Murree soil according to experts is relatively young and geo-morphologically fragile with hard grey-reddish sandstone and purple red calcareous shale, both of which have the highest tendency towards landslides and related fallout. The soil is as little as six inches thick in Murree and at places up to two feet. The indiscriminate building that has been going on infinitely in spite of spineless and meaningless bans imposed from time to time have put the entire future of this area on a slippery downward slope. There is nothing but disaster waiting to materialize and more than once, genuine public concern has found its way into the media, but the usual royal indifference reigns supreme. It seems more than likely that some have already written off Murree knowing that sooner or later it will be swept down and that will be the end of that. Therefore, a new Murree makes sense and even more important, promises to make mucho bucks, so all obstacles can be swept to one side and all plans readily approved and the games can begin. The serious state of Murree hills came again to the forefront when a dubious project raised its ugly head where once Cecil Hotel used to exist. Not only that the developers went ahead and started uprooting hundreds of trees and leveling the land, they did so in spite of legal objections with a more than willing judiciary in Rawalpindi to aid their great cause. The great irony is that while all this was going on, the developers managed to get none other than the Punjab Chief Minister (he is the Chief of New Murree as well), to inaugurate their shabby money making venture. With the official executive stamp on their backsides, who in officialdom is going to oppose them? The project has all the marks of an ecological disaster not to mention its grotesque and ugly edifice, but crass commercialism wins the day and it has won in Murree again. The few voices raised are all but lost in the applause of yet another progressive step taken by the rulers to raise standards of living and bring rest and recreation facilities to its people. No one has thought it fit to publicly address the various charges leveled about the state of Murree hills. Instead, complete contempt is well evident. The apartments will go up, rich people will get richer, those who are wise to invest will reap a windfall and ugly business will thrive. When the disaster hits, which it will, it will be deemed an act of God and we would be asked to beg forgiveness for our sins and pray for mercy.

There are also disturbing reports that the new city will adversely affect the three water storage areas located in Rawal, Simli and Mangla, which as we well know are the lifeline for millions of people. The Murree hills are not exactly overflowing with bubbling springs and gurgling springs. It has always had a severe water constraint situation and for years and even now, the pipeline laid by the British in the 1940s has fed water to the people, in spite of innumerable encroachments, hostile takeovers by the armed forces, absence of maintenance and a host of other factors. While most of Murree is perpetually in the grip of water shortage, the new scheme raises more issues than resolves the ones, which already exist. Once again, the infrastructure of this new project remains closely locked with those who feel it is not their duty to share this openly. Worse, there are reports that the critically needed Environmental Impact Assessment, a necessary prerequisite for a project of this scale, have not been carried out. If these reports are true, the situation is even worse than feared. Yet again, there are many people who believe that rather than drawing up grand designs for new hill resorts, ostensibly for the people, it is time we seriously restored the ones we have which have deteriorated beyond belief. Resorts like Kalam are ghettos. Naran fares no better, swamped by indiscriminate and lawless building frenzy. Fort Munro – well the less said the better. Nathiagali suffers and sinks into mountains of garbage and the far-flung Gilgit, Hunza, Skardu cry out for proper investments and upgraded facilities. Swat is a disaster and not worth visiting. Instead of looking inward, we can only eye the great future into which we wish to plunge helter skelter. No, the disease is not simply this burning ambition to build anew, it is the failure to take stock and move realistically.