Compensation demanded for families to be affected by KCR project

Disgruntled leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and chairman of the Organisation Restoration Committee Dr Farooq Sattar on Friday demanded compensation for the people to be affected by the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) project, stating that had the authorities done their job right, the situation would not have become a crisis.

Over 4,000 families living for decades around the KCR’s 50-kilometre loop in the city are going to be affected by the expected demolition drive on the Supreme Court orders to clear the KCR’s right of way. The families have been protesting and demanding alternative accommodations from the authorities before their houses are razed.

Dr Sattar, who is a former chief of the MQM-P, joined a protest held outside the apex court’s Karachi registry by the potential affected people of the KCR. He said the authorities were also bent on demolishing leased houses which should not happen at any cost.

He said some institutions were also talking about demolishing houses in Lines Area, instead of providing their residents lease which was their constitutional right because they had been living there since Pakistan came into being.

He pointed out that some elements of the land mafia were active in Gulshan-e-Maymar, doing ‘China-cutting’. He condemned the rising land grabbing incidents in the city and criticised the land authorities for abetting the criminal elements in return of alleged kickbacks.

Earlier on Thursday, Dr Sattar visited the National Stadium to watch the opening ceremony of the Pakistan Super League. He said the cricket season in the country was like spring which the people did not see much here but whenever they found it, they enjoyed.

Referring to the gas leak at the Karachi port that killed over a dozen people, he said although the city was facing that crisis, people thronged the stadium to watch the match.

JI writes to CJP

The Jamaat-e-Islami’s Karachi chapter has appreciated the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) for taking notice of the deplorable condition of Karachi.

The party sent a letter to the chief justice of Pakistan on Friday, blaming all institutions, particularly the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA), for Karachi’s sorry state of affairs.

According to the letter, the KMC and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board have made the lives of people miserable. The Jamaat-e-Islami appealed to the top cop of the country to take notice of the organisations that had destroyed “this golden city”.

It alleged that the chief minister of Sindh, the mayor of Karachi, the SBCA and Karachi Municipal Corporation had turned Karachi into Mohenjodaro. The JI said that because of these people there was an acute water shortage, and the city was facing power outages.