GUJRAT: The Gujrat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GTCCI) has endorsed the site proposed by the district government for the establishment of Phase-II of the small industrial estate.

Some two months ago the land located along left side of the Sargodha road near Saroki bridge of Upper Jhelum canal was proposed for the project but due to apprehensions that it would affect some residential areas located near the site, locals opposed the official plan that had to be abandoned. However, the officials of the land revenue department proposed another chunk of land comprising some 468 acres, located on the north side of Gujrat-Sargodha road.

A joint team comprising officials of the district government, GTCCI and the city MPA Imran Zafar visited the proposed site. After two-week long consultations, the chamber formally endorsed the proposed site at a meeting of its executive committee, presided over by president Mian Muhammad Ijaz on Wednesday.

Mr Ijaz told Dawn that the GTCCI had formally sent its approval of the proposed project site to the district coordination officer.

Local industrialists running manufacturing units had been demanding initiation of second phase of the industrial estate for more than two decades. After chamber’s consent for the site, they now hope the provincial government will expedite the process of land acquisition for the project.

He said the proposed site was only five kilometers away from the GT Road bypass and the authorities had pledged to construct another 100-foot long approach road from the national highway to the industrial estate, in addition to the existing Gujrat-Sargodha road, which was already a dual carriage way.

DCO Liaqat Ali Chatha said the district government had started working on the project after stakeholders approved the selected site. Now a team of concerned departments would visit the proposed site after which the provincial government would be asked to allocate funds for early acquisition of the 468 acres of land.

He said no residential area would be affected because of execution of the project, adding there might also be no resistance to the project from land owners in the area as most of them showed willingness to sell their lands in their meetings with the land revenue officials.

Hundreds of manufacturing units are operative in the residential areas of the city since long due to non-availability of a well-planned industrial estate. The existing industrial estate had no vacant plots as its whole land had been utilised back in 1990.

The paper work on Phase-II of the industrial estate had originally been initiated back in 1995 when a piece of land located along main GT Road near Chani Hafiz was selected for the purpose. But the plan faced stiff resistance from the local land owners and was abandoned.

In 2004, the district government proposed a piece of land near Mehsam area, along Gujrat-Bhimbher road, but the site too was rejected, after a decade-long “consideration”, by the local chamber and industrialists.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016