Where is our right-of-way?

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The process of blocking streets by installing barriers has gained pace before the onset of general elections in Karachi, it has been reliably learnt.
The trend of barrier installation in the city started in April 2009 and the Sindh Home Department, while taking action, had decided to remove all the barriers from the city streets, but after the passing of almost three years, Karachi had once again been turned into a city of barriers.
Sindh Special Home Secretary Collin Kamran Dost, while ordering a citywide crackdown against barrier installation on 15th December 2008, said that the law enforcement agencies were facing problems during targeted operations in some parts of the city.
He claimed that the provincial home department was facing difficulties in removing of barriers from different streets of the city due to political intervention. The provincial home department had issued a notification and ordered all the Station House Officers (SHOs) to take action against people involved in the practice and to remove all the barriers from city streets.
The Sindh Home Department, keeping survey reports of intelligence agencies in view of illegal barriers, had warned citizens through a notification to remove illegal street barriers in various parts of the city. If the barriers were not removed per orders, an operation would be launched within the next seven days, mentioned the notification.
In the notification, nazims and SHOs of their respective areas were directed to provide details of permitted barriers to bring improvement in law and order situation in the city but all in-vain. Due to involvement of different political parties, the home department had failed to implement its own issued directives.
Meanwhile, residents of different areas, owing to the deteriorating law and order situation in the city, installed barriers at the entry and exit points of their localities and deployed private security guards with the help of residents to thwart the chances of any untoward incident from happening. Later, the security guards vanished from these posts after transferring their responsibilities to political workers.
It was observed that in some areas of the city, people had started establishing check posts around barriers where activists of different political parties were deployed to monitor the activities of their opponents. The barriers installed at various places have restricted the movement of people, including law enforcers.
“Now installation of barriers has become a business for a few people for minting money from the residents in the name of providing security to them,” said a resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, adding that, “Involvement of party workers was creating hurdles in the free movement of people in the area.”
He said that some people of the area had announced to install barriers at the entry and exit points of the society but after a passing of few weeks, they sent their workers for payment. He said that the workers of the society were of the view that these charges were taken for deploying private guards and had collected Rs500 from shop-holders and Rs300 from owners of the plots to pay salaries to the guards.
When Sindh Inspector General Police (IGP) Fayyaz Ahmad Leghari was approached for comments, he said he had no idea about any home department directives as he was not in-charge of Sindh police at that time. “I am busy in the investigation of the twin blasts that took place in the city and it would be better if you contact me for more details later,” he added.