Encroachments removed from around Parking Plaza

The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) carried out a massive anti-encroachment operation on Saturday in the surroundings of the Parking Plaza in District East.

KMC Anti-Encroachment Senior Director Bashir Siddiqui said all the cabins, food stalls and tea kiosks on roads, and other illegal structures were either removed or confiscated by the corporation. Grills, iron rods and shades protruding outside shops in the vicinity were also removed by bulldozers.

The operation was carried out under the supervision of KMC Anti-encroachment Additional Director Shakir Zaki.

Heavy contingents of police and Rangers accompanied the KMC anti-encroachment teams during the operation. A total of eight people were arrested during the operation for violating the law, Siddiqui said.

The anti-encroachment director also alleged that his team had received threats from some political parties for removing encroachments. In a press statement, he said, the operation was carried out on the directions of the Supreme Court and it would be continued on Monday as well.

“We will not come under the influence of any political party,” he said, adding that whosoever would interfere in the operation would be dealt with in accordance with the law.

Later, another anti-encroachment operation was carried out in District South’s Burnes Garden. Two under-construction buildings on Burnes Garden were demolished by an anti-encroachment squad.

“Heavy machinery was used in demolishing the buildings,” Siddiqui said. The operation had to be halted as a fire erupted in dry grass strewn across the garden, after which the fire brigade reached the site and extinguished it.

During another anti-encroachment operation on Tariq Road, all the food stalls, cabins and betel kiosks from the footpaths were removed. A shopkeeper and an owner of a teashop were also arrested during the operation.

CM’s directives

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has directed all the divisional commissioners and deputy commissioners not to bulldoze any katcha house or cottage of the poor during the ongoing anti-encroachment drive, warning them of strict action in case they did not comply with the directive.

The CM said the provincial cabinet had decided that no house would be bulldozed during the winter. He added that the Supreme Court had ordered removal of encroachments along the roads, footpaths and nullahs.

“But, the district administration has started bulldozing katcha houses along the embankments of the canals and leaving people living there and their children to live under the open sky,” he said, adding that any such inhuman act by the administration would not be tolerated by him.

Shah said on his instructions, the Sindh advocate general had met the chief justice of the Sindh High Court and requested him to stop district & sessions judges from ordering the destruction of houses.