Anti-encroachment drive reaches Khori Garden

The ongoing anti-encroachment drive reached Khori Garden where around five thousand small and big encroachments were demolished on Wednesday.

Metropolitan Commissioner Dr Syed Saif-ur-Rehman, while monitoring the operation against encroachments, said the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation had given 139 shops on a makeshift basis but the shopkeepers had made almost five thousand shops on their own that were all encroachments.

The commissioner said this place was very beautiful but all these encroachments had given it an ugly look and after the operation Khori Graden would be restored to its original shape. Moreover, senior director anti-encroachment Bashir Siddiqui said a marriage hall in Federal B Area was demolished and many encroachments were removed from Bilal Chowrangi to Coast Guard Chowrangi in Korangi.

He said that the operation had been successful due to the coordination of district administration and police. A day earlier, Korangi’s Mehran Town turned into a battlefield after violent protests broke out as the Karachi Development Authority’s (KDA) anti-encroachment cell attempted to perform their duties. At least four people, including three KDA employees, were wounded while miscreants set about half a dozen vehicles on fire.

KDA teams often brave protests, but for the first time during the current operation, they met with a strong resistance when they attempted to raze illegal houses in the Mehran Town locality of Korangi.

The situation turned ugly when the KDA team reached the locality with heavy machinery in order to launch an anti-encroachment operation there, but before they could start, miscreants among the protesters attacked the officials by pelting them with stones.

As many as three employees of the KDA’s Estate & Enforcement Department, including a photographer of the authority, were injured as enraged protesters attacked the officials. The demonstrators also torched at least five motorcycles and a car as well as an estate agency during the protest. They also put up barricades and burning tyres on the road and staged a sit-in against the KDA team.

A large number of protesters, including women and children, participated in the sit-in and put up a massive resistance against the anti-encroachment efforts of the KDA officials. The demonstrators also shouted slogans against the relevant authorities.

Fake allotments

Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shalwani directed the authorities concerned to check the allotments of housing societies and companies.

He issued the order while presiding over a high-level meeting on the anti-encroachment drive in the city. The commissioner asked to check whether the allotments had taken lease on genuine or fake documents, and ordered cancelling them if found fake.

More anti-encroachment staff

KDA director general Samiuddin Siddiqui said that they would increase their anti-encroachment staff to retake the cell’s land from the land mafia. He said this while inquiring after the health of those KDA officials injured in an attack by protesters during an anti-encroachment drive in the Mehran Town of Korangi on Tuesday. Siddiqui directed the finance director to provide full support to the injured employees.