Lahore Zoological Garden earned up to Rs 6.2 million during three days of Eid holidays and recorded 180,000 visitors, Director Shafqat Ali has claimed. He told the Business Recorder on Saturday that although his zoo attempted to attract more visitors, unlike last year's record 230,000 visitors, it failed to achieve it because of threat of possible terror attacks.
"But we have achieved an impressive revenue figure as compared to that of last year due to increase in the prices of tickets," he said. He then talked of the facilities his zoo provided for the visitors during the holidays, which included the setting-up of six walk-through gates, a score of new benches and five water chillers. In response to a question about the security, he said, the Zoo had already put in place police and other law enforcers and installed 32 closed-circuit television cameras five years ago. Although there were a string of complaints from visitors who had bemoaned the absence of animals such as giraffes, hippos, rhino, puma lion and birds, he denied having received any such complaint and assured that Lahore Zoo would import a couple of giraffes soon. There were also complaints of the cafeteria's overcharging for the daily food items which were hardly available at the listed price.