KARACHI: Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) has requested the Sindh government and other authorities concerned to help in getting its 20-acre land vacated from powerful encroachers.
The hospital administration wants its land vacated to expand the healthcare facility to cater the increasing number of patients but it is facing a strong resistance from the encroachers.
The JPMC is spread over on 72 acres out of which 20-acre precious land is occupied by encroachers and the hospital management is helpless to get its land vacated from powerful encroachers backed by political parties.
The encroachers have established illegal slums on the hospital land where scores of families are living in small homes. Efforts of these people to encroach upon more land of the hospital continue.
As many as 28 departments of the JPMC, its surgical building, administrative block, doctors and staff colony are spread over 50 acres land while the reaming 20 acres of the hospital land is occupied by the encroachers.
In the past, the hospital administration has on several occasions already approached Sindh government and law enforcement agencies to get its land vacated from the encroachers.
The JPMC accommodation committee has also issued several notices to illegal encroachers but they have refused to vacate the hospital land.
The hospital is braving extra burden of millions of rupees annually in the account of utility bills, water, gas and other facilities that are being stolen by the encroachers.
The hospital administration had launched anti-encroachment drives in past but the political influence of encroachers successfully failed all such efforts.
JPMC Executive Director Dr Seemin Jamali said that several requests have been sent to the anti-encroachment cell and other civic institutions to get the JPMC land vacated from powerful individuals. She said the residents of slums inside the hospital premises are a serious security threat to the hospital.
She urged the Sindh government to allot alternate land to illegal settlers and retrieve the encroached land of the hospital from them.
She said some encroachers were found involved in illegal activities like selling drugs and running wines shop in the premises of the prime healthcare facility of the megacity.
