KARACHI, April 7: Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim has said that Jumma Goth, demolished by the city government, was neither a recognized nor a regularized village and 85 per cent of its population comprised Afghan nationals.
He was addressing a press conference in his assembly chamber on Friday after the Sindh Assembly session was adjourned till Monday.
The chief minister, who failed to make a policy statement on the floor of the house on the issue of the demolition of old villages but was not allowed by protesting opposition benches, made his statement public at the press conference.
He said that after receiving complaints in this regard, he had formed a five-member committee comprising three ministers, Sardar Manzoor Panhwar, Irfanullah Khan Marwat and Sardar Nadir Akmal Leghari; adviser Aijaz Ali Shirazi; and Member Land Utilization Khalid Mehmood Soomro to look into the matter. Besides, he added, he himself had investigated the matter and visited the locality.
The facts collected through the relevant records and investigations showed that the survey carried out during 1987 put the number of villages in Karachi at 803. Of them, 423 have been regularized so far and another 380 are under the process of regularization.
The chief minister said that Jumma Goth did not exist in the record. “This village, in fact, was named after a known land-grabber Jumma Khan Afghani and most of its residents were illegally settled Afghan nationals. The village was raised on the land having a major underground water conduit.”
Mr Marwat, Mr Leghari and Mr Soomro, who were accompanying the chief minister, endorsed his statement.
Dr Arbab pointed out that the committee had also found that the city government had not only razed Jumma Goth but had also removed encroachments from Hyderi, Liaquatabad, New Karachi and other areas most of which were dominated by Urdu-speaking people.
He said the opposition was trying to make it a political issue by accusing the city government of pushing Sindhis out of Karachi. The aim, he claimed, was to create a rift between Urdu- and Sindhi-speaking people.
He said that the opposition was not interested in resolving the issue, rather, it wanted to pit brothers against brothers. “We would not allow them to do so,” he said, adding that even in Islamabad, the Capital Development Authority was shifting people from one place to the other and paying compensation to the affected people without inviting any trouble.
“People from different parts of the country and speaking different languages live in Karachi. There is no restriction on Sindhis, too, to have a residence of their choice anywhere in the country. However, the government cannot allow land- grabbers, criminals, and drug-pushers to set up illegal colonies on the state-owned lands.”
In Karachi, there is a trend of land-grabbing. Land grabbers, through their gangs, would set up hutments after encroaching upon the open government lands overnight and bring in criminals, drug-pushers, absconders, etc from other parts of the country to maintain the illegal occupation.
He pointed out that all along the strip beneath the Nipa Bridge, there were hundreds of structures built on the government land. Criminals and scavengers operate from such places.
The chief minister said he himself had seen numerous compounds in the Scheme 33, spread over an area of 100 acres, but without a hut having been built. He said he had come to know that Janu Arain, a Dadu-based notorious dacoit, was also involved in land-grabbing in Karachi.
He said that the investigations made so far revealed that over 2,000 acres of government land in Karachi had been grabbed and sold to private parties.
He produced to the journalists a bag full of illegal documents and revenue records, saying that it was handed over to the government by some relatives of a deceased Mukhtiarkar (revenue official) of Mirpurkhas. The fake papers, he said, related to the deals with private parties and involved thousands of acres of government land.
In reply to a question, the chief minister said that Karachi’s land was vulnerable to land-grabbers because of its value. “Foreign investors, including manufacturers of Mercedes car and other multinationals, are keenly interested in setting up their plants in Karachi but the illegal activities of land-grabbers are creating obstacles in the way.”
In reply to a question, he said that efforts were being made to regularize all recognized old villages in Karachi and provide them with all basic amenities.
