ISLAMABAD, June 21: The Punjab government has issued a detailed report on the controversial New Murree Development Authority (NMDA), which it abolished on Thursday.

It said a summary was moved to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and after his approval, the authority was dissolved on June 19.

The provincial government believed that the project could cause irreparable damage to the natural environment of Murree as it entailed massive construction activity on over 25 per cent of the project area.

According to an official handout, during the year 2003, the Punjab government had decided to launch a mega project for the development of a hill resort in Murree area at an approximate cost of Rs40 billion. For this purpose, 4,000 acres of forest land was earmarked.

The resort was conceived to be an elite-centric tourist destination with state-of-the-art infrastructure and world class facilities like five-star hotels, golf course, shopping malls and residential villas, the report said.

In order to give legislative cover to the proposed scheme, NMDA Act was passed by the provincial assembly on January 24, 2004. Subsequently, NMDA was established on July 3, 2004, in order to plan, execute and manage the scheme.

For the purpose of feasibility study, concept development, master planning, detail designing and construction supervision, the National Engineering Services Pakistan (Nespak) was appointed as consultant.

But on the other hand NGOs, civil society organisations and environment protection groups raised serious concerns about the adverse impact of the scheme on the environment which prompted the Supreme Court to take suo moto notice in case number 10 of 2005, prohibiting the progress on the scheme till the environment impact assessment was approved by the Pakistan-Environmental Protection Agency.

The handout said: “It is well considered view of the experts that any tourist resort project should have an imprint as soft as possible on the ecological system.

“It is pertinent to mention that Murree has already become an extremely crowded place and over exploitation of its carrying capacity would have seriously and permanently damaged this premier tourist destination. Moreover, the issue of ribbon development, land speculation and mushroom growth around NMDA area was conveniently ignored.”

This was the main reason that led to widespread protest by NGOs, civil society organisations, media and environment groups against the implementation of the scheme.

The study conducted by Nespak raised serious questions about the adverse impact of the scheme on fast depleting environmental assets of Murree because thousands of trees were to be cut as a result of massive constructions envisaged by the project.

As the work on the project came to a grinding halt due to the injunction order passed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, NMDA became redundant and all of its key position holders were transferred.

Owing to the long delay in execution of the scheme on grounds of legal and environmental issues, it was considered appropriate to look afresh the entire issue of development of hill resort along with the role of the authority in the changed circumstances because its continuation would have been a sheer wastage of precious resources.

Therefore, after having extensive consultation with environmental experts and taking into consideration all legal, administrative and financial issues it was considered prudent to scrap the scheme and dissolve NMDA.