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HYDERABAD, June 14: Proceedings under the Land Acquisition Act have been completed for 8,100 acres of land acquired for the Right Bank Outfall Drain project and form-B will be issued by the Sindh government’s survey department to the landholders after verification of documents.
However, on account of shortage of staff in the survey department, the issuance of form-B has been delayed because against the vacancy of 15 Tapedars only three are working.
This was said by land acquisition officer (LAO) of the RBOD, Ahmed Javed Qazi, while responding to queries of journalists in Deh Thorhi Phathak on Thursday.
He claimed that payment for 218 acres of land, acquired for the RBOD project, had been made to 128 landholders.
He said that 10,000 acres of government and private land was being acquired for the Right Bank Outfall Drain which was divided into three ‘reaches’ each having an area of 90 kilometres.
He said that in the reach-I, 3,080 acres of land located between Deh Karampur and Deh Thori Phatak, which was partly government and partly private, had been acquired for the RBOD.
He claimed that payment for the land was being made after verification of documents and measurement of the land.
Mr Qazi said that keeping in view fertility of land, it was classified in three categories of A, B and C with maximum purchase rate of Rs95,000 per acre for A-category of land, followed by Rs65,000 and Rs50,000 for the rest of two categories, respectively.
He, however, said that rates for land varied in different areas keeping in view the average production of agricultural lands in previous years.
About disbursement of land compensation, the LAO said that Rs16,576,518 was disbursed among 128 people, of them 87 landholders received compensation of Rs16,037,518 for acquisition of their land whereas 41 individuals were given Rs539,000 as their structure were removed for the RBOD’s alignment.
He said that there were some disputed cases in which individuals were occupying government lands and claimed that in several cases of granted lands, the growers did not have the required documents which might help them get compensation under the LAA.
In this connection, he said, Deh Bhacha was the most troubled area where most of the growers were occupying government land and they did not have legal documents though they possessed receipts of dhal.
He said that the Dehs where compensation had been paid to growers included Karampur, Channa (Sehwan taluka), Mirzapur Jageer (Daulatpur taluka), and Lakhi Theyhat, Thatee, Bhambhar, Tangiyani and Kachi (Kotri taluka).
SLOW PACE OF WORK: Work on the Right Bank Outfall Drain project is going on in piecemeal as contractors have yet to start full-fledged work on the 273-kilometre-long project.
One of the reasons hindering the work of contractors is that growers whose lands have been acquired for the RBOD project have not been paid compensation.
According to the chief engineer, irrigation, Bashir Dahar, who is the director of the Right Bank Outfall Drain project, each contractor has been given two years to complete his work otherwise his security deposit will be fortified.
Residents of villages, located in Sehwan and Kotri talukas, are not allowing contractors to continue their work as this will dispossess them of their lands.
An employee of a contractor told this correspondent that villagers of the Thor Phathak deh resisted the digging work being carried out by his company on the ground that they had not been paid compensation for their lands.
The land acquisition officer, Javed Ahmad Qazi, claimed that in various cases villagers did not have valid documents of their lands which entitled them to claim payment under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894.
He said some growers had also occupied government land.
He said land had been acquired for the project in 67 dehs in Sehwan, Kotri, Daulatpur, Thatta and Mirpur Sakro talukas.
