KARACHI, July 4: Representatives of those who have been affected by the Lyari Expressway Project have accused the National Highway Authority of “disrupting law and order situation in Karachi” by carrying out a demolition operation which, according to them, has no legal sanctions and no respect for human values.

At a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Thursday, they criticized the June 27 operation carried out in Akbar Road area of Shershah in which several residential and small commercial units were pulled down, which rendered a large number of people shelterless and jobless.

They claimed that people were given only a two-hour notice to vacate their houses and shops. Moreover, they maintained, it was also in total violation of the May 15 agreement reached between the NHA, city government and representatives of the affected people.

According to the agreement, a committee, comprising three experts from each side, would conduct a new survey to make a suitable arrangement/changes in the master plan of the expressway project, they said.

They said this report was carried in newspapers.

“The ongoing operation under the supervision of the NHA shows that it is bent upon executing the project without taking into account people’s difficulties,” they alleged.

They said the operation created a serious situation in the settlements and people were left with no other option but to put up resistance to it. The NHA would be held responsible for the consequences, they warned.

They contested the government’s claim that the affected people were being given alternative plots and cash for construction of houses, and said people were neither issued any allotment orders nor there was any demarcation of land at any of the designated places.

Among those who poke at the press conference were Tariq Aziz Hoat from Hasan Aulia village, Asghar Khan from Mianwali Colony, Haji Wasil Khan, and the Naib Nazim of UC-3 (SITE Town) and vice chairman of the Action Committee for Civic Problems, Maruf Sultan.

A representative of the Qaumi Jamhoori Party has announced the party’s full support to the cause of the affected people of the expressway project and urged other parties to support them.