Not so long ago, there were times when kids and grown ups and ladies used to walk in the evening and kids play cricket, football or just hangout in the grassy grounds near their homes, in model town.
but suddenly, after the restoration of the society by Nazam Mian Amir Mahmood and with the orders of the Governor Punjab, every thing in model town gone commercial including parks and open grounds.
there are 8 huge grounds in a plus sign, a big and huge circular park in the center, a linear park along the Ferozepur road AKA (Nawaz Sharif park or China Park) and multiple triangular grounds and green belts at each bus stop. beside these another huge ground and open area in between E-F block grounds and M-N block grounds, in K-block. And another big open ground between kot-lakhpat vegetable market and Ittefaq Hospital. and the old sunday bazar ground between Ladies-Club and the Government Girls-College.
Before the restoration of the society very few grounds were on lease or commercialized. Then, here and there few plant nurseries and just a couple of sports clubs and that’s it. rest was open and free.
Now no ground is available to the residents. all grounds are leased and fenced !!!
These grounds are leased to outsiders, they play, have fun, arrange functions and wedding parties, do music concerts late night, sub-lease, film shoot and gift it to someone in high ups too. Having a leased sports grounds is a status symbol for them ………….. and model town residents just sigh and wonder, wow what a restoration?
Question is, why we, the residents have no play grounds and who is benefiting from all this commercialization?
Co-operative societies are formed to benefit its members (residents), it never supposed to make profits.
see what other societies do.
Tech Society: main ground photos (click to enlarge)
This is not all :(
the only available grounds are the two pay per visit parks !
see these both park’s parking tickets
the printed fee is Rs 5/- but they charge Rs 10/-
this simply means they are earning double what they are leased for, and there should not be any doubt that some one from the society is getting kickbacks by letting them do that, and this is going-on at Sunday Bazaar too.
and don’t forget these leases are auctioned in millions.
and the saddest thing is that, elected members are model town residents, they are looting their own home !
i strongly suggest that there should be a MTS ID Card (with readable magnatic strip) which one can use to have a free access to these parks and other facilities in MT
