Senate body calls for more sports facilities to youth
By M Bilal

ISLAMABAD—The Senate Standing Committee on Sports and Culture on Thursday emphasized the need of a state of the art sports grounds in Federal Capital to facilitate the youth.
The committee which met under the Chairmanship of Senator Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, made this observation while discussing the alleged callousness of Capital Development Authority (CDA), resulting in deprivation of a large number of sports loving community from playing different games by undertaking roads projects on 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th avenues.
Chairman CDA, Kamran Lashari informed the Committee that initially the traffic load in Islamabad was not much, therefore, only roads were constructed in the Right of Way (RoW) of 600 feet wide leaving rest of the area open/vacant.
He said at some places inside the ROW play grounds, parking spaces and weekly bazaars etc were allowed as a temporary measures and added these were allowed subject to the condition that the same would be vacated as and when required for development/construction of roads.
Kamran Lashari further said construction of roads in these avenues was carried out in line with the Master Plan of the capital and no violations have been made.
He said in order to restore the image it is highly imperative to construct the said planned principal roads.
Lashari also briefed the Committee about the re-allocation sites for the play grounds adjacent to 7th, 9th and 10th avenues and said CDA is mindful of the fact that sports grounds are being affected.
He said plans have already been worked out to relocate and develop many sports facilities with improved standards.
The Committee directed the CDA to suspend work on the roads in these avenues and constituted a Sub-Committee headed by Senator Prof. Saeed Siddiqui with a directive to sort out a viable solution to the problem and submit a report.
Other Members of the Sub-Committee are Senators Muhammad Enver Baig, Fauzia Fakhar-ur-Zaman Khan and Dr. Shahzad Waseem.
The Committee also listened to the viewpoint of the stake holders/affectees and assured them that an amicable solution to their problems would be sorted out with a view to ensure that the people of the Federal Capital may not be deprived of recreational facilities.
Those who attended the meeting included Senators Mrs. Fauzia Fakhar-uz-Zaman Khan, Prof. Muhammad Saeed Siddiqui, Muhammad Enver Baig, Muhammad Aslam Buledi and Murad Ali Shah. Minister of State for Interior, Dr. Shahzad Waseem, former test cricketer Sarfraz Nawaz and sports loving people of various sports organizations also attended the meeting.