KARACHI: Administrator Murtaza Wahab performed the ground-breaking for the rehabilitation of the existing Fish Aquarium at Clifton’s Bagh Ibne Qasim on Friday.

There was plaster shedding from the overhangs of the aged-aquarium building structure with the rusted iron bars showing. The entrance to the building had been blocked with a big panaflex pointing to the obvious fact that things inside were even worse.

Sitting quietly in one of the front row seats, Aliya Farooqi, the longest serving director of the fish aquarium, was lost in thought as she looked at the place. “With degrees in marine sciences and zoology, I joined the fish aquarium in 1965,” she told Dawn. “I retired from here in 1991,” she added.

The iconic site at Bagh Ibne Qasim has been closed for 23 years

She said that she was out of the country when she heard about the closing of the aquarium in 1998. “I was saddened by the news as I have very fond memories of families frequenting the place with children. We used to have all the details about every creature next to each aquarium window. The visits used to help children learn about aquatic life and the different sea creatures that we had here,” she said.

It was mentioned during the ceremony that the gate ticket for one person at the time used to cost just a few rupees and yet the aquarium generated an income of about Rs1.5 million a year excluding the Rs400,000 that came from parking.

There have been efforts to reopen the aquarium earlier as well, but they proved unsuccessful. In 2004, there was a Rs75m tender was approved for its rehabilitation but work on it could not begin. Then the tender was revised to Rs103m in 2009 but the project got shelved as the government did not have the money.

Click project director Afzal Zaidi recalled his fond childhood memories of visiting the aquarium in the early 1990s. “It was not a very big aquarium but it was the only one that we had here. Then 23 years ago, for reasons not known it was closed,” he said.

Administrator Wahab unveiled a new plaque on the outside wall of the aquarium. He said that he remembered the place from childhood visits with his illustrious parents in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “Then it was closed. Today, there is also this general perception that the Bagh Ibne Qasim, where this aquarium is located, is also closed. But it is an open 134 acres of greenery. People go to the northern areas to appreciate the greenery and they have it right here,” he said.

Coming back to the aquarium, the city administrator said that his target was to see it opened again in the next six months.

“All of us with memories of coming here as children will then be bringing our children here,” he said, adding that he along with his staff was currently in the process of rehabilitating all the parks of the city. “In doing so, we are also working on making the parks visitor-friendly by setting up eateries and building washrooms there. The KMC is also going to have vegetable gardens in all the parks,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2022