KARACHI: “The area to be cleared to make way for Karachi Circular Railway [KCR] is 11 1/2 acres of which so far, in these two days, Pakistan Railways have successfully cleared about 13,300 yards, which comes to 28 per cent of the total area. Our prime focus right now is providing right of way for the project,” said Pakistan Railways Divisional Superintendent (DS) Syed Mazhar Ali Shah during a press conference at the City Station here on Thursday.

He said that their work to have the land vacated started soon after the Supreme Court order of May 9 whereby the Railways administration was directed to work with the local administration and clear the area for the trains to run in the next 15 days.

“Thereafter we met the commissioner Karachi to start the joint operation, which officially kicked off on Wednesday [May 15],” he said.

He reminded what the KCR would mean for citizens. “The KCR is in the better interests of the people of Karachi, who can do with better public transportation,” he said. “Later the KCR will be linked with the Karachi to Peshawar ML-1 project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] that will be like a transformation of the transportation system of this country as it will have a great impact on urban transportation,” he added.

Resettlement of people removed from encroached land is Sindh govt’s responsibility, say PR officials

Responding to a question asked about the people occupying the land that needed to be cleared, the DS said that the people were sitting on Pakistan Railways land at the cost of national interest. When asked about the 324 acres of land reserved for providing alternative settlement for the people affected by the KCR, he said that it was something that the Sindh government has to look into and not the Railways.

“But,” he added, “according to the design of the KCR network, 67pc of it happens to be elevated with just eight kilometres on ground level.”

When it was pointed out that the people living along the lines who were being called ‘encroachers’ were saying that they had been leased the land by Railways people themselves, the DS said that they have zero tolerance for anyone from the Railways involved in such matters.

“Earlier, until 2016, it was the Japan International Cooperation Agency [JICA] which was working on KCR. JICA carried out the research, feasibility study, etc. Then later after 2016, the urban transport project came back to government of Sindh to be linked with the Green Line, Orange Line, etc, all of which is aimed at an efficient mass transit and transportation system that is a part of CPEC,” he said.

“But first things first, the loop line we want to clear right away,” he said, adding that Pakistan Railways would be sharing briefings about daily developments about their overall network, including the bottlenecks with the media throughout the operation on a daily basis.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019