LAHORE: As the construction work on the Orange Line project heads toward the 1.8km long underground portion of the 27.1km train route, many of those displaced by it have started shifting to alternative places from various central Lahore areas, including Jain Mandir and adjacent localities.

The contractors engaged in the construction work have started demolishing shops and other structures including field office of the Lahore Waste Management Company at Jain Mandir.

On the other hand, some of the residents of Bengali Building (Jain Mandir), a complex comprising 127 residential rooms, complain they are still being denied Rs1 million (per room) compensation as announced by the chief minister.

They say out of total 127 rooms of the building, the occupants of some 100 quarters have been paid compensation so far.

“The officials manning the one-window camp near Jain Mandir say a summary in this regard is yet to be approved by the authorities concerned,” Taheed Saeed, a resident, told Dawn on Thursday.

He said the residents won’t vacate the building unless they were paid the promised compensation amount.

“The LDA people are coming to us daily, asking us to vacate these rooms. But we have told them to first pay the compensation amount and then take over the rooms,” he added.

He said though he had three rooms in the building, he was paid Rs1 million compensation for just one.

Mazhar Saeed said his family had five rooms, but the officials paid him compensation for just three.

Similarly, Muhammad Shakeel Azhar, another resident, awaits compensation for two of the four rooms occupied by his family. Others including Naveed Saeed, Ahsan Ali, Liaqat, Aftab, Asif, Aqeel, Rehmat and Mustaqeem also lament about denial of compensation for some parts of their properties in Bengali Building.

Similarly, Irshad complained about being paid residential rates of compensation for his commercial property comprising four shops.

“During the property survey, the officials entered the names of family heads only. So now they (the officials) are counting even more than one families as one unit without considering the number of the rooms occupied, despite the CM’s announcement of Rs1 million for each family (per room),” Tauheed Saeed explained.

He said the chief minister must now intervene and order payment to the affected residents as per his pledge.

Meanwhile, those who have got the full compensation amounts have started packing up for shifting to other places given the speedy demolition and digging work in their localities.

“Yesterday, I asked my wife and children to pack up as we have to leave the place we have been living for decades. My eldest son got very depressed, while my wife keeps crying since then,” Mustaqeem, a resident of Jain Mandir, said in a gloomy voice.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2016

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