LAHORE, Feb 2: The All Pakistan Kutcha Abadis Alliance has urged Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali to take steps to provide ownership rights to 30 million kutcha abadi dwellers in the country.

The demand was voiced at the national convention of the alliance held at the Lahore Press Club on Sunday.

Representatives of kutcha abadis organizations from Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi and Sahiwal spoke at the convention, presided over by Zahid Anjum.

They said that the rulers should accept the kutcha abadis as the outcome of the government failure to provide shelter to the people in the urban areas and livelihood in the rural areas.

They said that the squatter settlements known as kutcha abadis had come into being following the migration of the rural population to the urban centres as a consequence of introduction of the capital intensive farming and shortage of shelter for the people in urban areas.

They said that President Musharraf’s government had in 2001 decided to grant ownership rights to the dwellers of kutcha abadis existing in 1985 or earlier. But the policy had not been implemented in letter and spirit and many squatter settlements had been bulldozed instead.

They said that the President Musharraf’s policy should be implemented and steps should be taken to check migration of rural population to urban centres to minimize chances of emergence of new kutcha abadis.