3,000 illegal structures demolished in five months

The estate and enforcement department of the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) during the last five months has demolished more than 3000 illegally raised buildings, marriage halls, shops and other encroachments.

Director General KDA Samiuddin Siddiqui, who has been supervising the operation from the beginning, said the operation would continue without any kind of discrimination. All parks, including Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park, had been cleaned for the public.

Media Coordinator KDA Akram Sattar said the anti-encroachment operation would continue in full gear. A day earlier, a decision was made that around 3,500 traders, who lost their businesses in the ongoing anti-encroachment drive in the city, will be accommodated in makeshift markets that will be established on land of the Sindh government and the KMC available in the city.

The decision to compensate the affected traders was made during a high-level meeting chaired by Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani at the Commissioner’s Office. Adviser to the Chief Minister on Information Barrister Murtaza Wahab and Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar attended the meeting among others.

The meeting decided that the relocation of around 3,500 traders would be accomplished on an immediate basis in the first phase of the compensation for the affected traders. The traders to be relocated in the first phase are those who were bona fide tenants of the KMC and were deprived of their shops during the anti-encroachment drive currently under way.

The meeting was informed that a committee would scrutinise the list of 3,575 shopkeepers who were tenants of the KMC and had been deprived of their shops during anti-encroachment operations.

The committee will be headed by Special Assistant to the Chief Minister Waqar Mehdi while its other members will include the Karachi metropolitan commissioner and the South deputy commissioner.