KARACHI, April 25: As the city government continues to ignore the expansion of Sharea Faisal, the land and estate department of the armed forces has allotted more land along the road to private parties.
The land is being allotted neglecting the future expansion of Sharea Faisal and also ignoring the completion of service lanes and development of greenery along the road from Karsaz up to the Quaidabad bridge.
As the defunct KMC/KDA did not acquire the needed land along the road, there might be haphazard constructions, encroachments or irregular/ defective allotments along the road by various land-owning agencies, experts say.
They say that as the volume of traffic is increasing day by day on this main city artery, named after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, there is a need to pay proper attention to development of Sharea Faisal.
The importance of the Sharea increases as it is the only link between the city centre and the city’s international airport in the absence of an alternative route to the airport.
The service lanes are needed the most because in case of a trouble on the main road, these could be utilized as alternative roads, and there would be immediate availability of land along Sharea Faisal if there was a need in the days to come for the expansion of Sharea Faisal, said an expert.
The KDA on a previous expansion of Sharea Faisal several years ago had left the service lanes incomplete as it had then exhausted funds. The service lanes are now available up to Karsaz from the Metropole Hotel.
Although the successive governments maintained the road, they did not pay heed to the proposals regarding its expansion because a major chunk of the land is in the possession the armed forces — the air force, the navy and the army or the cantonment board, Faisal.
There are no encroachments along the portion of the land in the possession of the land department of the three services, but as the city government or the defunct KMC/KDA submitted no plans to the relevant land and estate departments, they are not aware of the prospects of future expansion of Sharea Faisal and so constructions/allotments and installation of hoardings has been made in a manner that these would suffer some sort of dislocation, and immediately there is no land available for greenery, too, on either side.
At Natha Khan and Natha Khosa goths at Chhota Gate unauthorized constructions are taking place along the road which may too hinder future expansion of the road. The problem became so serious in the past that at the time of completion of Quaid-i-Azam International Airport, the authorities had built a boundary wall along the road from Chhota Gate to Star Gate to stop the encroachers from disturbing traffic along Sharea Faisal.
Concerned citizens says if no serious efforts are made by the authorities, the available land along the road might be encroached upon or there might be bogus allotments at the cost of the Sharea.
They have urged the Sindh governor, the planning and development department minister and the city Nazim to enable the city government to resume the land along Sharea Faisal needed for the expansion of the road at the earliest, and plantation be immediately carried out on this portion of the land to save the future of the city.