KARACHI, Nov 22: Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad Khan has called for maintaining transparency in land matters throughout the province.

In the past, there had been large-scale irregularities and plunder which caused a direct loss to the province and the people.

He was presiding over a meeting at the Governor's House here on Monday which was attended by Chairman, Sindh Land Committee, Justice (Retd) Syed Abdul Rehman and some members of his committee, Principal Secretary Brig (Retd)Akhtar Zamin, Additional Secretary Aftab Khatri and other officials.

The governor made it clear that public resources are a trust which should be used judiciously, transparently and in better ways. Justice Abdul Rehman said his committee had given final shape to a 145-page document relating to land utilization by holding continuous meetings. In this document, additional prices of all available plots, which were sold out since 1985 on cheaper rates, have been fixed.

He said this list had been sent to the Chief Minister as per rule and also approved by the Cabinet. He informed that as per this list, Rs 550 million have been recovered, so far, from owners of such plots and deposited into the State Bank and the said plots were also regularized.

He said that the process is continuing for recovery of more amounts which can be over Rs 4 billion. Regarding defunct KDA, Justice Rehman said owners of 685 plots out of plots allotted from July 1990 to July 1996, had been directed to approach the committee so that they could be issued challans and so far 200 of them have approached from whom an amount of Rs 19.50 million has been recovered.

He said information about such plots and their owners and the additional amount have been fed into the City Government's web-site. Justice Rehman made it clear that prices of these plots have not been fixed at Rs 500 per square yard, but the price has to be fixed for each plot as per market value.

He pointed out that the problem is that the allottees had sub-divided their plots and sold to a large number of people, while the KDA plots too had changed hands twice or thrice whose entries are not available in the record. He informed that the application of each applicant had to be exhaustively scrutinized which was a lengthy and cumbersome work. -APP