Capital authorities accused of targeting working class, ignoring powerful real estate interests
ISLAMABAD:
Representatives of scores of katchi abadis, street vendors and other working class organizations from across the federal capital recently held a press conference at the National Press Club the other day to demand an end to the wave of evictions launched by the Capital Development Authorities (CDA) in recent weeks and call on the higher courts to uphold their constitutional right to housing and livelihood.
Speaking to the press, leaders of the Awami Workers’ Party, All-Pakistan Alliance Katchi Abadi and Anjuman Rehribaan appealed to the Supreme Court and the newly established Federal Constitutional Court to uphold the stay order issued by the Supreme Court in 2015 in response to a constitutional petition filed by the AWP that imposed a moratorium on summary evictions.
Alia Amirali, leader of the AWP, said the CDA and ICT have recently intensified so-called “anti-encroachment operations” against scores of working-class housing as well as street vendors, informal hoteliers and others, while granting free license to big real estate tycoons and big businessmen to build illegal housing projects and commercial plazas.
She said this brazen class war goes against all the original legal injunctions and planning principles of the CDA ordinance, and the Master Plan has become a total travesty. She noted that an officer was brought from Lahore to head the CDA’s enforcement division and its drive to evict the poor, in complete violation of all rules.
Leaders of Katchi abadi Patras Joseph, Mir Azam, Muhammad Riaz, Rukhsana Qazi, Amanat Mashih, Ahmed Guddu and many others from sectors I-10, I-9, Barim Imam Muslim colony, Saidpur village, H9, Alipur Farash, French colony, 100 wards F6, G-8 Miskeen Musharraf colony, G7 Allama Iqbal colony and H11 Muzaffar colony said that it is the workers living in Katchi Abadis who have built, maintained, nourished and cleaned Islamabad since its inception and they have a right to the city which is enshrined in the constitution.
They noted that the AWP had filed a petition in the SC in July 2015 when the CDA and then the PML-N bulldozed an encampment of over 20,000 Pashtun workers on I-11 and the Supreme Court not only granted that petition but also issued a stay order against any further summary evictions.
They said the court had asked the CDA as well as the federal government to demonstrate that they had a viable plan to meet the housing demands of low-income segments of the urban population, but over the past decade, Islamabad and other major cities in the country have increasingly become hostage to real estate developers, speculators and land grabbers.
