KARACHI: The government of Sindh has taken over the control of around 30 acres of Sindh Government Employees Cooperative Housing Society (SGECHS)’s land, falling within precinct of ‘Deh Allah Fai Superhighway.
This action has been taken to execute on-going work of laying down 34 inch diameter 3-parrallel water conduits under the Karachi Bulk Water Supply (K-4) project, Deputy Commissioner (DC) Malir district revealed.
“The government had earmarked 244 acres of land to SGECHS for building a housing scheme but SGECHS unilaterally occupied further government land, which was unlawful,” DC informed.
The K-4 water conduit project would run on around 11,396 acres of government land, in addition to 1,053 acres of private owners’ land. Total cost of K-4 project comes in at around Rs 25.5 billion including Rs 15.5 billion of construction work, Rs 5 billion for land acquisition and Rs 6 billion which have been allocated for purchase of heavy earth moving machinery and water siphons. Federal and Sindh government are sharing the project’s cost on a 50-50 basis.
However the government in order to acquire private land for K-4 project has allocated Rs 5 billion to compensate the owners/allottees of this piece of land, DC confirmed.
Board of Revenue Sindh, Law Department, Local Government Department, Planning Department and the Finance Department of Sindh Government, following a complete scrutiny have submitted a summary to Chief Secretary Sindh for onward approval by the Chief Minister Sindh in connection to compensate private land owners of the acquired land by the government, DC asserted.
Private lands are located at Bin Qasim (10 acres), Deh Abdar (12.24 acres), Chohar (32 acres), Deh Amin-ollai (27 acres) Deh Kathore (62 acres), Deh Konkar (99.23 acres), Deh Northen (296 acres), Deh Shah Murid (253 acres) and Deh Allah Fai (229 acres). There are estimated 630 private owners and they would be compensated according to respective size of assets. In this connection a notification has also been issued in September 2015, DC said.
The water scheme will run trough 217 kilometers (kms) from Keenjhar Lake Thatta to Karachi including 99 kilometers under canal water system.
The water supply lines would run within 1,000 feet width and both sides of land has been declared free from any sort of construction in order to provide protection to the water pipelines. Frontier Works Organisation is the executor of the water pipeline work. Two water pumping stations one each at Keenjhar Lake and the other near Karachi would be built for the purpose.
It is pertinent to mention here that Sindh High Court and Board of Revenue Sindh have already rejected the false claims of many villages on paper for compensation.
