Parts of Karachi may be submerged, warns commission head

KARACHI: Karachi's powerful land mafia has put a large part of the megapolis at the risk of being submerged, a member of the judicial commission formed to probe the province's failure to provide clean drinking water said on Thursday.

In December last year, the Supreme Court had ordered the formation of a commission comprising high court judges to conduct an in-depth probe into the authorities’ failure to provide clean drinking water, sanitation facilities and a healthy environment to the people of Sindh.

Members of the judicial commission on Thursday visited the city's Manghopir area. During the visit, it was revealed that the hills that have been preventing the Hub Dam water from entering the megapolis are being crushed by the land mafia.

Justice Iqbal Kalhoro, the head of the commission, warned the authorities that if they didn't prevent land grabbers from crushing the hills, then the city's district West would no longer have adequate living conditions.

The commission will report its findings about the reasons why the residents of Sindh do not get clean drinking water as well as why sanitary conditions are deteriorating in Sindh.

It will also examine the statutory role played by the Sindh Environment Protection Agency on issues under the Environment Protection Act, 2014. The commission has also been also tasked with examining officials or material from relevant agencies/organisations, inclusive of all the civic and land-owning agencies.

Karachi, a sprawling megapolis of over 20 million, has a history of different mafias. Among them, the land mafia had been the most dreaded one, which has grabbed vast patches of land in the city over the past years.

However, a crackdown launched in 2013 against terrorists and criminals has cleansed the city, leading to considerable reduction in crime and violence. These mafias and other criminals, however, continue to drain the city's resources, although to a lesser extent as compared to the past.