KARACHI, May 30: The Zulfikarabad mega city project, approved in haste and without the mandatory environment impact assessment, would prove to be another ‘permanent disaster’ like the Left Bank Outfall Drain, warned speakers at the launch of a position paper on Thursday.

The government, they said, must re-examine the project as there were serious concerns over the project’s proposed site and its impact on existing human settlements as well as the region’s ecology. The absence of a land resettlement policy would make matters worse, they added. The event was organised by Friends of Indus Forum in collaboration with World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan to launch the position paper titled Ecological and Social Impacts of Zulfikarabad — A Megacity Project.

According to the paper, one the most important concerns regarding the project relates to its potentially hazardous location — Zulfikarabad is juxtaposed with Gujarat Seismic Zone in its southeast and with the Makran Subduction Zone in its northwest.

“Particularly, the Allah Band Fault upon which the city will be built has produced some of the largest earthquakes in the world. The fault poses a big threat not only to the new city itself but can also affect Karachi that is located at a distance of about 300km from the origin of the fault in Gujarat (India),” the paper says.

It says that over the past 15 years this location has experienced some large-scale geological and atmospheric disturbances that caused devastation on a mass scale. The disasters included the Cyclone TC-02A in 1999, Bhuj earthquake of Gujarat, India in 2001 and Cyclone Yemyin in 2007.

“Ignoring the site’s vulnerability during the planning stage of Zulfikarabad can ignite a series of mega disasters for future residents of the city,” the paper says.

The other equally important concern relates to the displacement of large population inhabiting the 199 dehs of Keti Bunder, Jati, Shah Bunder and Kharo Chhan, part of district Thatta, it adds.

According to the 1998 census, 275,898 people are living in 1734 villages of the four sub-districts. Of them, at least 70pc of the settlements are likely to be disturbed by the implementation of the project.

The Friends of Indus Forum asks why these coastal communities are forced to bear the burden of all kinds of ‘development’ in the country without their say in the matter, according to the paper. “The forum also questions how the government is planning the resettlement of local communities who will be displaced on account of this so-called development,” it says.

According to the paper, the proposed location’s major attraction for the government appears to be the availability of ‘unutilised’ state land that could be converted into a highly lucrative urban enterprise. No doubt, the government owns a major proportion of the land of the proposed project, but it seems to have ignored the fact that the area houses about 50pc of the country’s remaining mangroves cover and most of which have been declared ‘protected’ since the 1950s.

What appears highly strange is that despite the fact that more than 50,000 hectares of the proposed site covered with mangrove forests, most of which are under the administrative jurisdiction of the Sindh forest department, none of its officials have been included in the project’s board of governors, it says.

Zulfikarabad, the paper says, will make it impossible for the local communities to continue with their fishing activities thus putting them in a situation similar to the one when dams were built on the Indus River a few decades ago.

According to the paper, the city is planned to be built on both sides of the Indus River in its deltaic region that is a Ramsar site and covers under various international conventions. Most important among them is the Ramsar Convention.

“The forum reminds the government that by ratifying the Ramsar Convention, the government has recognised the Indus delta for its great economic, cultural, scientific and recreational value and that the loss of such services cannot be repaired,” it adds.

Project lacks EIA Sharing their views about the project, the environmentalists said that it was being executed in violation of rules and regulations. No environment impact assessment (EIA) of the project had been carried out, they said.

“An EIA is mandatory to look into the ecological impacts of a project. Unfortunately, only economic benefits are taken into consideration while ecological and social aspects have been ignored,” said Mehmood Akhtar Cheema, country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

FIF president Sikandar Brohi said the absence of a resettlement policy, among other things, would lead to grave injustice to and exploitation of the natives. “Land-grabbing in the project site area has already started and people are being forced to sell their properties,” he alleged, adding that there was a dire need for a land resettlement policy so that displaced people could get their due rights.

Aijaz Qureshi, Ghulam Mustafa Mirani, Sassi Memon and Nasir Panhwar also spoke.