KARACHI, May 30: A spokesman for the city government, criticizing the party which is opposing the Daman-i-Koh project, has said that the city government had announced developing the park in North Nazimabad to protect the land from being grabbed by the ‘land mafia’, which is eyeing the precious land.

The spokesman alleged that a particular party was misguiding Karachiites by propagating that the project would deprive residents of North Nazimabad of water.

Explaining the situation, he said that the defunct KDA had set up a water reservoir of six MGD capacity in the hills of Manghopir to supply water to New Karachi, North Karachi, Buffer Zone, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad and Liaquatabad. The reservoir had been handed over to Water Board in 1983-84. At that time, he said, the reservoir had developed many cracks which rendered it unusable after a few years.

He said that for more than 10 years now, North Nazimabad and its adjoining areas had been receiving water through pumping stations of Shipowners Society and Sakhi Hassan, adding that the claim that the park project would affect the water supply was misleading.

In fact, the spokesman claim, the land mafia which in the past had encroached upon a portion of the land in question, was eying the precious land. He said that the city government had earmarked funds for Daman-i-Koh in its 2004-05 budget and on Dec 27, 2004, the PC-1 of the project was approved. He said that tenders for the project had been invited through print media on Nov 14, 2004 and on January 15, 2005, the city nazim gave final approval for the project. On May 8, the foundation stone of the project was laid, he added.

The spokesman pointed out that the whole process had taken several months during which no political party came out with opposition to the project. However, he added, certain quarters had emerged with objections only now when development work on the site was kicked off.

He said that backing the land mafia by using the pretext of disruption in water supply should end, and declared that the city government would never allow the land mafia to gulp down this precious land.—PPI