CHITRAL: Dozens of shopkeepers on Saturday voluntarily demolished the marked portions of their shops at PIA chowk in Chitral city during the anti-encroachment drive.

About 200 shops, hotels and other privately owned buildings have been marked by the revenue officials to have encroached upon the public land and notices have been served on the encroachers to raze the structures on their own or these would be brought down by heavy machinery of the district administration.

Deputy Commissioner Osama Ahmed Warraich told Dawn that the land acquired for widening of the city road in 1982 was actually encroached upon by the land grabbers.

He said owing to encroachments streets of the old bazaar had grown too narrow to even accommodate the pedestrians and the public circles had been demanding action against the encroachers. He said encroached areas were marked giving the encroachers ample time to voluntarily remove the illegal structures.

On the expiry of the deadline, he said the district administration would carry out the operation to clear the city roads of encroachments. He said no leniency would be shown to anyone. Mr Warraich said the drive would be extended to whole of the district to retrieve each and every inch of the illegally grabbed state land.

Assad Khan, a shopkeeper in PIA chowk, who was busy in hammering down a portion of his shop, said he had no option but to pull down the structure.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2015