KARACHI: City govt plans to establish force against encroachment
KARACHI, Dec 7: The city government has decided to set up a force to remove illegal encroachments and check their re-emergence in the city.
This force will be formed by merging police personnel of the defunct KDA and KMC. This was decided at a high-level meeting, chaired by DCO Fazlur Rehman, held here at the Civic Centre on Tuesday.
The meeting decided to launch an aggressive campaign against land-grabbers with the help of proposed force. This force will be given a free hand to operate in the whole city and it will also be empowered with registering FIRs, arresting accused and sealing buildings.
The DCO asked EDO Revenue to prepare the organizational chart of the proposed force within three days and submit a summary to the provincial home department for approval. The PC-I for buying machinery and equipment for the proposed force will also be finalized in a week.
The participants of the meeting were told that the department concerned had sent proposals for establishing a 'hawker zone' so that areas of Saddar could be cleared up of peddlers and make-shift stalls, set up on footpaths and roadsides. The EDO directed the concerned officials to finalize this issue on the priority basis.
It was disclosed in the meeting that a new 'Awami' transport plan had been prepared for Saddar and no complaint against it had been received either from the transporters or general public so far.
The plan was being finalized at a rapid pace. The meeting was told that new bus routes were prepared for Tower, M.A. Jinnah Road and I.I. Chundrigar Road, which were sent to the city nazim for his approval.
Around 21 reputed companies had responded to an advertisement regarding preparing a digital map of Karachi. Out of those 21, four companies were declared as pre-qualified. These firms would submit their final reports by the end of December, it was pointed out.
To shift the timber, iron and grain markets from the city, a survey has been initiated to select a suitable location near the Northern Bypass. The cattle markets will also be shifted out of city limits and there will be a ban on the entry of cattle-heads in the city.
The meeting was attended by EDO (Works and Services) Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, EDO (Revenue) Waseem Ahmed, EDO (Transport) Tahir Soomro, officials of the traffic police, besides the representatives of master plan and other city government departments. -PPI
