THE Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) grants permits and the Karachi Development Authority approves maps for these China-cutting houses when someone behind these plots approaches these authorities. Later on these changes are projected to be ‘legitimate’.

The SBCA duly allows these permits while the KDA approves these maps to people who are the real culprits behind the China-cutting business.

After building houses over amenity plots, with the complicity of the two above-mentioned government authorities, these culprits then sell their houses, portrayed as genuine, to innocent people.

After colluding with those originally guilty — the KDA and the SBCA — the builders then demolish the houses of the poor who had spent their life-long savings on their houses. This exercise was once again conducted by these authorities in Surjani. On April 25 the KDA demolished a number of houses in Surjani Town, built on ‘amenity plots’. How long will such excesses continue? Stern action must be taken by the authorities concerned to stop exploiting the people who already live in abject conditions.

Shahabuddin Shah

Karachi

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2017