Sindh concedes it doesn’t control up to 70 per cent land in Karachi

The Sindh government has conceded that it had no authority to control up to 70 per cent of Karachi’s area that was controlled by different federal landowning agencies.

The startling disclosure came as Sindh Information and Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah and Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani addressed a joint press conference on Sunday.

According to the information minister, federal landowning agencies that control up to 70 per cent areas of Karachi include cantonment boards, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Karachi Port Trust and the Pakistan Railways.

“But even then,” said Nasir, “the Sindh government in all areas of the city had worked day in and day out without any discrimination, as it had the support of the district municipal corporations and other such civic agencies.”

He said on several spots on Sharea Faisal and other road intersections in the city “which don’t come under the administrative control of the KMC or the DMC, provincial ministers were present on a night-long basis to supervise the operation to drain out accumulated rainwater”.

He said such troubled spots in Karachi came under the administrative control of cantonments or other land-owning agencies, “but still the Sindh government had dispatched its entire machinery and manpower to resolve the drainage issues there”.He said the 12-kilometre patch of Sharea Faisal which connected the Karachi airport to the Metropole road intersection was managed by different cantonments but “the Sindh government has been conducting sanitation work on this portion too".He said the Civil Aviation Authority in Karachi had failed to build a proper drainage system on its land in Karachi although several letters had been sent to the authority on this issue. The minister said the Sindh government had also assumed the responsibility of the waste disposal work on the CAA’s land in the city.He said all provincial ministers, advisers, and special assistants to the CM had been fully active to help the people in distress as the city had received heavy rain this time round as compared to the previous years.

Speaking on the occasion, Saeed Ghani claimed that land in the city had been encroached, including the drainage areas of Karachi, before the Pakistan Peoples Party had come to power in Sindh. He said the media and the the public knew very well that who were the people behind the encroachment in Karachi and during which era this anti-social practice had taken place.

In the past, Ghani said, “even in my own constituency in the city, the land of Karachi Water and Sewerage Board reserved for constructing Treatment Plant-II had been leased out on an illegal basis”. Later, he added, up to 2,000 houses had been constructed on this land.

Ghani said this incident had taken place despite his serious protest against the encroachment. He said unlawful settlements on the land of parks and drains in Karachi by constructing houses was quite easy while destroying those settlements was quite difficult.

He conceded that certain illegal encroachments in the city had been regularised as “now a transparent probe will be conducted into this issue and no concession will be given to the officials who abetted this unlawful practice”.