- Role of Government Agencies in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: A case study of Lahore, Pakistan   1100 kb by    Ahmad, Ijaz & Sharif, Burhan | pardeesee@yahoo.com    Short Outline This paper is on the performance of government department with respect to efficiency. The main thing is to highlight the deficiencies present in the organization. The paper will surely help to improve the weaknesses those are pointed out. Abstract Pakistan is a developing country with a population of more than 14 million people. The urbanization phenomenon in the cities as well as in small settlements is very high and resultantly, the villages are changing its character to town and then towns to metropolitan cities. Few cities of Pakistan are very famous due to existence of historical buildings and a number of are popular for presence of natural features. These two main factors are attracting the tourists not only from Pakistan but also from all over the world. Lahore, the second biggest city of Pakistan has a population of more than 08 millions. It is famous due to presence of historical buildings. Lahore Fort, Badashahi Mosque, Shalamar Garden and alike are few examples in this regard. All these are attracting local as well as tourists from other countries to this city of Lahore and every year rate of visitors to these buildings is increasing. Government of Pakistan is making lot of efforts to facilitate these tourists in form of rendering varied nature of services through its line departments. On the other hand, it is also making efforts to preserve these buildings from factors due to which these buildings can be deteriorated. For this purpose, a separate department; namely Archaeology Department has been set up at the central level to coordinate and monitor the activities related to conservation and promotion of historical buildings in all parts of the country. This department is working under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This is trying to combat the situation by introducing different measures but so far the desired results could not be achieved. The reasons for this failure are many. Resultantly, much is still needed to improve the situation both for conservation and promotion of historical buildings throughout the country in general and Lahore in particular. This paper will explore the deficiencies present in the existing institutional set up of Archaeology Department. Moreover, it will explore the main hurdles due to which the problems related to conservation of historical buildings in Lahore could not be solved. At end, certain conclusions are made. Based on conclusions, recommendations are framed to improve the situation. Keywords Historical Buildings, Conservation, Archaeology Department Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2011: LIVEABLE CITIES: URBANISING WORLD, Meeting the Challenge   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper