Operation to clear footpaths of welfare organisations’ cabins kicks off today

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) anti-encroachment department has decided to get rid of cabins of different welfare organisations, including Edhi Foundation, Chippa, Saylani and Alamgir Welfare Trust, established on footpaths along roads.

An operation in this regard is going to kick off today in the city’s District Central’s Liaquatabad area on the directives of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The anti-encroachment department has written a letter in this regard to the deputy commissioner of District Central, about the removal of structures/encroachments from footpaths and amenity plots.

The KMC, according to the letter, has planned that the operation against the encroachments will start at 11am on Tuesday and continue round the clock for two days. Due to apprehensions of a law and order situation, the KMC has requested a heavy contingent of police and support from the paramilitary Rangers.

The operation, according to a senior director of the KMC’s anti-encroachment department, Bashir Siddiqui, is in continuation of a crackdown in which they have demolished several illegal shops and their boards protruding outside on footpaths throughout the city.

In this phase of the operation, he said, they would be particularly targeting welfare services. In the first phase, anti-encroachment teams, he explained, would conduct the operation in District East, where they would clear all the footpaths on main roads, including Sharea Pakistan, Shahrah-e-Quaideen, Shaheed-e-Millat and University Road, of encroachments, particularly stalls, cabins and offices of volunteers’ services.

Most of such welfare organisations, according to the official, have been informed about the operation and they have voluntarily started clearing the footpaths. As for the ambulances parked there, he said, the Supreme Court’s direction was very clear that footpaths should be cleared. “The ambulances can be parked anywhere on the road to facilitate in any emergency situation,” he said. On the second day of the operation in Liaquatabad, he said, they would clear late-night sittings at tea stalls.