RAWALPINDI: The Punjab government has decided to give proprietary rights to the members of the Christian community living in katchi abadis and asked the city district government to carry out a survey to find out such settlements in the district.

A senior official of the city district government told Dawn that the Punjab government had allocated Rs20 million for the welfare of the minorities in the annual budget 2013-14 but the amount still remained unutilised despite the passage of six months.

The fund can be utilised to settle the Christian community members. However, there are very few katchi abadis in the district, especially in the garrison city. There is no specific slum of the Christians in the district as they lived along with the Muslims.

According to official figures, the Rawalpindi city has four katchi abadis - two in the Rawal Town and two in Potohar Town. The dwellers of three of the slums were given the proprietary rights in 2007 during the tenure of then chief minister Pervaiz Elahi.

The fourth slum - Ziaul Haq Colony - is established on the Pakistan Railway land. The city district administration pursued the railways to declare it a katchi abadi but the latter refused to give a non-objectionable certificate without the permission of the federal government.

In 2012, the PML-N-led provincial government regularised the katchi abadis in different areas of the district. The Murree tehsil had a katchi abadi with 200 units on 67 kanals of land and its inhabitants also got the possession letters from the Punjab government.

An official of the city government told Dawn that there were two katchi abadis in Jaloo and Hasanabdal of the Attock district while Jhelum and Chakwal had no slums.

He said the government wanted to give proprietary rights to the dwellers of those katchi abadis which were established on the provincial government land. The government will not purchase the slum land if it is owned by the private owners.

The official said the provincial government had also asked the city government to improve the graveyards of the Christian community, including their boundary walls and lighting system. He said the city government had also been asked to find out additional land for the settlement of the Christians.

When contacted, Asim Sajjad of the All Pakistan Katchi Abadi Alliance told Dawn that most of the katchi abadis inhabited by the Christian community were located in Islamabad while in Rawalpindi there was only one slum in the Westridge area.

He said Christians lived in katchi abadis but most of them had already been regularised at least in the garrison city. He said there was a need to focus on the Islamabad katchi abadis so that its dwellers could get the ownership rights.