LAHORE – The City District Government Lahore (CDGL) on Friday started an anti-encroachment operation without chalking out a clear mechanism, Pakistan Today has learnt. Despite spending millions of rupees on the campaign’s publicity, the operation is bound to fall short of expectations. A town municipal officer (TMO) said that the encroachers would soon return and the CDGL did not have a plan to check the menace, which had spread rapidly across the provincial metropolis. “The drive is being initiated without any deadline which means it cannot be result-oriented,” he added.
A senior official of the Lahore district coordination officer’s (DCO) office told Pakistan Today that the so-called comprehensive strategy of taking on board all town administrations was without any line of action. He said that corrupt officers were also involved in the encroachment drive.”The drive does not mention the rules under which the campaign will be initiated. Violators will be fined and even jailed but the amount of the fine and sentence terms are not mentioned. The CDGL plan does not bracket all sort of encroachments including illegal extensions of houses and unauthorised projected areas around shops on streets.
It also does not deal with illegally-built plazas, markets and even residential buildings on WASA drains. It will be limited to markets and bazaars and roads aiming to remove temporary and permanent illegal portions around shops, make-shifts eateries and carts,” the official added. “High-ranked CDGL officials also did not bother to conduct a detailed survey to identify encroachments, their size and proportion and compromised on marking just the markets and roads where the operation is to be carried out,” he said.
A Data Gunj Bakhsh Town official said that to ensure the campaign’s success and cope with the public resistance, the CDGL did not contact police. The law enforcement agency had just been informed that it will be called if its help was required, he added. “There are also reports that encroachers could not be served timely notice by the CDGL,” the official said. The CDGL invited members of the provincial assembly (MPA) to be a part of the campaign but only Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MPA Allah Rakha participated in the flag-march on Thursday.
“The drive is seen as a failure as it is not a joint operation. Town administrations and the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) will launch separate operations and TEPA and WASA, subsidiaries of LDA, have not been taken on board. Their role is limited just to cooperate if required regarding the provision of machinery,” he added.
Residents of Ravi Town and Data Gunj Bakhsh Town complained that as soon as CDGL, LDA and TMA teams left after removing illegal constructions, the encroachers resumed their activities. An LDA official said that the agency urged residents of its schemes to voluntarily eliminate all encroachments without any further delay, failing which they would have to bear the demolition charges as well. Action would be taken against the encroachers under sections 33, 34 and 40 of the LDA Act 1975, he added.
The Punjab government, during Shahbaz Sharif’s first tenure as CM, successfully removed all encroachments from the main Garhi Shahu Bazaar during 1998 to 1999. It widened the main bazaar road being used by people coming from GT Road when the old Garhi Shahu Bridge was demolished to construct a wider bridge linking Allama Iqbal Road to GT Road. The road had now been encroached upon again, blocking an alternate route to GT Road. The last anti-encroachment drive was also marred by knee-jerk strategy, mismanagement and lack of coordination. The campaign was launched by the CDGL on the directions of former road rehabilitation task force chairman and Solid Waste Management (SWM) chairman Khawaja Ahmed Hassaan.
The authorities had given a two-day deadline to each town in this regard and all TMOs and officials of WASA, LDA, TEPA, CDGL, WAPDA, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL), police, railways and SWM took part in the campaign which could not meet its desired results. According to a recent survey, 27,877 kanals have been encroached upon. Out of the total, 5,036 kanals of the provincial government have been encroached upon, 18,773 kanals of the federal government, 735 kanals of the Punjab Auqaf Department, 3,105 kanals of other departments have been encroached upon. In Lahore, encroached land totals 42,858 kanals out of which 8,944 kanals is property of the provincial government, 28,765 kanals of the federal government, 1,592 kanals of the Punjab Auqaf Department and 3,297 kanals of other public-sector departments.
Even at the tehsil level, encroached land totals 14,311 kanals out of which the provincial government owns 3,721 kanals, federal government 677 kanals, Punjab Auqaf Department 705 kanals and 1,915 kanals are owned by other departments. Several areas of the city including Gulberg town, Allama Iqbal Town, Shalimar town, Samanabad town, Ravi Town, Aziz Bhatti Town, Wagah Town and Nishtar Town have more encroachments.
