KARACHI, Dec 27: Speakers at a workshop on Friday urged the citizens to join hands to protect Gutter Baghicha (sewerage farms) against encroachments, as land mafia and vested interests were trying to grab the land and deprive the people of over 430 acres of amenity space.
The workshop on “Legal Awareness/Training in Town Planning/Zoning to Save Gutter Baghicha” was organized by the Shehri - Citizens for Better Environment - and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation at the Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai Library, near the Gutter Baghicha, in Old Golimar on Manghopir Road.
The speakers said that even President Gen Pervez Musharraf had announced his decision in Karachi that the Baghicha would be developed into a modern park, but since then no concrete action was taken in this regard.
They said that over 50 hydrants had been operating in the Baghicha, ruining the roads and degrading the land. The city government, on complaints of the residents, had closed the hydrants a few months ago but within days the vested interests approached the Governor’s House and the hydrants were allowed to resume operations.
A large number of people have encroached upon the huge open space and began cultivating vegetables and were using hazardous chemicals and untreated effluents, discharged from a nearby industrial area, for irrigation purposes, they added.
The speakers said that vegetables polluted by hazardous chemicals were being marketed in the city, endangering the citizens’s lives. The concerned officials have failed to take any action against those responsible who not only have encroached upon the amenity plot but were also responsible for spreading deadly diseases among the people.
The civic agencies, who were supposed to be responsible for maintaining the park and keeping the land safe from encroachers, have themselves grabbed over 200 acres of land allotted to the defunct KMC Officers’ Housing Society, they alleged.
Giving a brief history of the Gutter Baghicha, they said that the Karachi municipality had established the facility on the 1,017-acre land on the Trans-Lyari Quarters in the mid-19th century, in which cereals, vegetables, fruits and fodder etc., were cultivated. By early 20th century, the Baghicha had been so much developed that it was described to be an “an oasis in the desert and a paradise for birds and naturalists,” in the Karachi handbook.
With the influx of refugees after partition of the subcontinent, a large track of the Baghicha was encroached upon and many kutcha abadis sprang up, which were later regularized. An industrial area and a number of marble-processing units followed.
Now, they maintained, out of the original 1,017 acres, only around 430 acres of land was left over and from that too the defunct KMC officers had obtained over 200 acres of land, which has been under dispute.
They said that although high government officials at public gatherings had time and again supported the idea to save the open space and turn it into a park, no concrete steps had been taken to begin work on development of the park, which created doubts among the public regarding sincerity of these authorities about the project.
Pointing out to another similar case of land-grabbing, they said that an NGO had been allotted a piece of land near Banaras Chowk for educational purposes. But it sold out a large portion of the land on which a commercial shopping centre has been set up now. They demanded that an inquiry be conducted into the matter and the influential culprits be taken to task.
Site Town Nazim Amir Nawab, Union Council No 8 Nazim Sidiq Akbar, UC-9 Nazim Babu Amir Khan, Navaid Husain, Khatib Ahmed, Nisar Baloch, Tahir Swati and others spoke.