KARACHI: Angry at receiving notices to vacate their shops and restaurants at the last minute, a large number of protesters blocked both tracks of the Superhighway near Noor Mohammad Kathore Goth on Sunday. During the hour-long blockade, the protesters — led by owners of CNG and petrol stations situated near the Superhighway — demanded that instead of a motorway, the authorities should build an expressway.

The protest was a follow-up of a press conference held a day earlier at the Karachi Press Club, where the Superhighway Stakeholders’ Committee had announced that they were against the building of the Motorway-9. The foundation stone for the Karachi-Lahore motorway project was laid in March by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif near Nooriabad on the Superhighway.

The first phase of the project includes a 139-kilometre-long, six-lane motorway from Karachi to Hyderabad, which will be completed at a cost of Rs36 billion. To complete the first phase, residents and restaurant owners received notices from the National Highway Authority (NHA) asking them to vacate the area within 24 hours.

With policemen standing on guard, the protesting stakeholders’ committee blocked the road for an hour after which they congregated in a nearby tent for lunch. During the lunch hour, the committee members aired their grievances concerning the ongoing project. Most of the speaking, however, was done by stakeholders rather than the people for whom the protest was held.

Standing amid a group of shopkeepers, landowners and restaurant owners, Shabbir Sulemanjee, chairman of the All Pakistan CNG Association, said: “The government should start the construction of the motorway from where they laid the foundation stone of the project. It has enough land to provide for the right-of-way needed for the project (220 feet on left and 450 feet on the right) including the required fencing.”

He further said: “Motorways are built on acquired lands and not on an already existing highway. If we let this happen, it will end up displacing 50,000 to 60,000 people.”

Comparing the motorway project with an earlier reconstruction plan for the Grand Trunk Road in Punjab, Fayaz Palari, who owns a hotel and a petrol station on the Superhighway, said “that project was instantly rubbished by the stakeholders and the GT Road was kept in its original form.”

Another member of the committee said the stakeholders had held talks with the government for almost two years which was why the “sudden evacuation notice took us by surprise”.

Shop owner Kamran Wahid said he had legally purchased his shop and, if nothing else, would want “to be compensated if the authorities plan to bulldoze it out of the way”.

Apart from that, the construction of the project would affect the business interests of the currently residing communities around the Superhighway, such as the Shoro, Palari, Baloch and Jokhio, who own petrol stations, restaurants and spare parts shop. Displacement of those shops and restaurants would mean an end to their business for which they were agitating.

At the same time, Iqbal Waheed, a landowner in the area and also part of the stakeholders’ committee, said “there’s no need for a motorway, if you ask me. What we need is an expressway in this area which would better suit the needs of the people working around it.”

According to him, an expressway requires less land to construct in contrast to a motorway.

When asked about the encroachments next to the highway, he quickly added that they “do not support an illegal encroacher or land grabber around the area. We are here to fight for the cause of the poor and want nothing more.”

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2015

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