KARACHI, April 21: The coordination committee of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has condemned the decision of the ministry of housing and works of the federal government to serve notices on thousands of retired federal employees to vacate the houses in which they have been living for 55 years.

The committee has demanded that President Gen Pervez Musharraf direct the estate department of the ministry to immediately withdraw these notices and to grant the retired employees permanent allotment of the houses as per decision taken in 1991.

In a statement, issued here on Sunday, the deputy convener of the committee, Dr Farooq Sattar, said the notices issued to the residents of Martin Quarters, Clayton Quarters, Pakistan Quarters and Jehangir Road Quarters had affected over 500,000 people.

For 55 years, he said, the residents had spent their hard-earned money on the maintenance and repair of those quarters and had been paying rents regularly. He observed that issuing notices to the residents to vacate the quarters was an injustice with them.

Dr Sattar said the MQM leadership of 1991 had got a resolution adopted by the National Assembly to allot the quarters on permanent basis and one of the former ministers had got it approved from the then prime minister in principle to issue lease papers to the residents, but the Punjabi establishment, instead of implementing that decision, had put it on the back burner.

The Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) has demanded that President Musharraf, in the Karachi package that he intends to announce at his public meeting to be held here on April 28, include awarding ownership rights to residents of Martin Quarters, Pakistan Quarters, Jehangir East and West, besides the Kutcha Abadis, and order that leases be issued to the employees of Pakistan Works Department before the referendum.

The PAT chief, Sindh chapter, Qazi Zahid Hussain, said a delegation of his party would meet the governor of Sindh and would ask him to include the basic problems of the citizens in the Karachi package.