Mayor pledges Rs20m for graveyard

The long-awaited project of a model graveyard in Dhamial Rakh, which has been pending for 15 years, may finally see the light of the day as Rawalpindi Mayor Sardar Naseem pledged an allocation of Rs20 million to set the wheels in motion. This was said on the mayor’s visit to the 1,000-kanal site, where he was accompanied by Municipal Officer for Infrastructure Rafaqat Gondal and chairmen of nearby union councils. Recognising the urgency of establishing a new graveyard in the garrison city that ran out of space for burying the deceased a long time back, the mayor has said that the cemetery will be built in phases. In the first phase, a grant of Rs20 million has been approved in a meeting of the municipal corporation to develop 50 to 100 kanals of land for the graveyard. This will include buying three mortuary buses, provision of all basic facilities and construction of the cemetery in an orderly manner, similar to the ones in Islamabad. Currently, all cemeteries in the city have fallen into the hands of the graveyard mafia who charge as much as up to Rs34,000 for digging a grave. In the past, Punjab Law Minister Muhammad Basharat Raja, Provincial Minister for Literacy Raja Rashid Hafeez and Member Provincial Assembly Omar Tanveer Butt expressed their commitment to making the project functional soon. However, no progress has been made in this regard. Published in The Express Tribune, December 25th, 2021.

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