LAHORE, Dec 9: The city government has decided to rehabilitate and develop the Harbanspura Gowala Colony at a cost of Rs20 million after a total neglect for the past 20 years.

District Nazim Mian Aamir Mahmood has declared the colony as a commercial project which would generate its own income for development and restoration of its infrastructure.

The city government would not only eject illegal occupants from 100 colony plots but also auction the 100 vacant plots on a lease basis besides recovering suitable dues for 400 plots which have been occupied by the gowalas for the past 20 years without payment of any dues.

The Harbanspura Gowala Colony housing 18,000 milch cattle for supplying fresh milk to Lahorites everyday has degenerated into a slum due to continued neglect on the part of the civic authorities.

Of 630 one-kanal plots, 100 have been encroached upon and an equal number are lying vacant. All the plots along the canal have been encroached upon. The Harbanspura police station has also been built on an encroached plot. As many as 400 plots are in the possession of the gowalas where they are keeping their milch cattle.

Former mayors of Lahore the late Mian Shujaur Rehman and Khwaja Riaz Mahmood had allotted most of the 400 plots to gowalas without recovering any costs. Allotment orders issued to the gowalas were written by the two former mayors on plain paper in their own hand mentioning no terms and conditions.

The defunct Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore developed the colony as an ambitious project on 1,041 kanals of land leased out to it by the Board of Revenue for 50 years for shifting the milch cattle out of the residential areas of the provincial metropolis but neglected it completely afterwards.

Of 50 years lease of the colony land allowed to the defunct MCL, 20 have passed without generating any income from it. The roads and streets in the colony have disappeared completely and the central greenbelt has turned into a marsh as a result of use for waste water disposal due to the absence of any sewerage system. A waste water pond has also been formed in a huge pit from where the earth has been removed and sold.

The colony not only lacks any waste water disposal system but has no arrangement for lifting of over 70 tons of cattle dung produced daily. The gowalas continue to dump the dung in vacant plots till the farmers from the nearby villages purchase it for use as manure. The heaps of dung pollute the atmosphere and serve as breeding places for flies and mosquitoes throughout the year.

All the shops in the small colony market are lying vacant and the market itself is crumbling because the shops have not been occupied since construction. The colony school was used for keeping milch cattle for a long time because the building was left vacant after construction.