National Assembly Body Expresses Concern For Allotment Of MHNP Land For Hotels

National Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change Chairperson Munaza Hassan Wednesday expressed her great concerns for the allotment of Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) land for setting up of hotels on the forest land

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 2nd Oct, 2019 ) :National Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change Chairperson Munaza Hassan Wednesday expressed her great concerns for the allotment of Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) land for setting up of hotels on the forest land.

Munaza Hassan while chairing the committee meeting inquired the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about the alleged illegal allocation of the land.

EPA Director General Farazana Altaf Shah informed the committee that EPA had clearly opposed the proposal for using National Park's land for establishing hotels. However, Capital Development Authority (CDA) despite the Agency's resistance allowed the contractors to build restaurants and hotels in the park, she added.

Shah mentioned that the builders on EPA's confrontation termed the Agency is being worried about reptiles rather than people who visit the national park for recreation.

"We have also stopped construction of chalets in MHNP which are being built in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa side of the national park comprising Makhnayal area," the DG EPA told the committee chair.

The committee members expressed their displeasure over the issue and the chairperson opined that environment, wildlife and clean ambience could not be jeopardized at the cost of small number of tourists' entertainment.

Munaza Hassan said, "If this may not be stopped now it will bring more blatant violations of the ecology and law in future. It has been violated by CDA where those responsible should be penalized." The committee proposed to call CDA officials to brief on the allotment of the land for building hotels.

Inspector General Forest Salman Khan Warriach told the committee that there were more encroachments on the land of MHNP owing to its economic value as it was a high value land.

He mentioned keeping in view the MHNP had been placed in the Ten billion Tree Tsunami Project to regularize the national park.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said according to WWF reports the endangered species of Blind Indus Dolphin and Markhor had been excluded from the list of extinct species.

Pakistan has become the only country to retain maximum number of mangroves in its coastal areas.