Staff Reporter
Disgruntled leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan and chairman of the Organisation Restoration Committee Dr Farooq Sattar has 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.
