PC-II For Redesigning Of National Museum Of Pakistan Gets Approval

ISLAMABAD, Nov 9 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 09th Nov, 2016 ) : The PC-II for redesigning of National Museum of Pakistan has received final nod from the Departmental Development Working Committee (DDWP) and will be submitted to Planning Division soon.

National History and Literary Division, Joint Secretary Mashhood Mirza, confirmed the approval of PC-II for redesigning of the National Museum of Pakistan and said "it would be submitted to Planning Division shortly".

He said the PC-II of Redesigning of National Museum of Pakistan, amounting to around Rs. 2.6 million, was a low cost project so it was submitted to the departmental committee for approval. While the projects costing big amounts are submitted to Central Development Working Party (CDWP), he observed.

"Earlier, he said the museum was designed according to 08 acres of land while the land allocated for the museum was just of 03 acres so redesigning of the museum was direly needed to start this project," he said.

The design for the state-of-the-art national level museum would be selected through open competition with participation of different expert architects, he said. According to the official source of DOAM, the project of redesigning of the museum was submitted to the relevant authority few months back so that the national heritage of unique artifacts can be preserved in the museum for the future generations.

The lingering project of National Museum of Pakistan from the last nine years received Rs 4.5 million only for its redesigning in the budgetary allocations of the year 2016-17. Thousands of artifacts discovered from various historical places in the country or recovered by Customs were ruining due to absence of proper museum facility in Islamabad, the source said.

These antiquities included handwritten Holy Quran scripts, unique sculptures of Buddhist era, clay utensils, British era guns, oil lamps, jewelry boxes, mother goddess sculptures, lantern, and many others, they added.

These artifacts were housed in warehouses of different museums, while some were placed at the floors in different small rooms of Archeology and Museums Department due to lack of space at Sir Syed Memorial Museum Hall, sources said.

It is pertinent to mention here that after independence, the national museum was established in Karachi, which was supposed to be shifted to Islamabad after it became the Federal capital. A nucleus of the National Museum of Pakistan was established in a private house of Sector E-7 in 1994 but the project was rolled back in 1998 with shifting of the artifacts to Taxila Museum.