The wall that separates the haves from the have nots. — Syed Tahir Jamal
Through the years, DHA continued to insist on its ‘right’ to Qayyumabad’s amenities land along Korangi road as well as a small piece of land set aside to accommodate the future expansion of the community.
Although for the last 20 years Qayyumabad residents have doggedly resisted DHA’s efforts to take physical possession of the land, KMC was unable — due to pressure from DHA Karachi — to develop the amenities it had budgeted for and which Qayyumabad was entitled to as a regularised locality. It could not give land to KESC for its substation, or to KWSB for its sump to supply water to ease the residents’ hardships. Shahid, a young resident of the locality, said bitterly: “When you don’t have water you simply buy it from tankers. But we can’t afford more than jerrycans sold here on donkey carts. That limited water is usually consumed for cooking purposes and by the women for their needs.”
After Gen Musharraf’s military government took over in 1999, DHA redoubled its efforts to coerce BoR into de-notifying the 53 acres it coveted. As if that were not enough, Sindh government officials claim that the corps commander’s brother, Syed Ghazanfar Ali Shah, was also very well received at BoR itself. “Earlier we kept resisting DHA, but what could we do when such influential people began to exercise their clout?” asked a dejected KMC official.
Government officials’ abuse of power
Land grabs — whether by individuals or organisations — are always carried out in complicity with government functionaries in positions of opportunity. The case of Qayyumabad katchi abadi’s land too is no different. The defence authorities’ arm-twisting finally bore fruit in 2004 at the hands of unscrupulous public officials.
The secretary GA&C Aijaz Hussain Kazi, acting under instructions from the chief secretary Sindh, initiated a summary (diary number 411 and dated Oct 23, 2004) for approval by chief minister Arbab Rahim, for local government “to re-notify Qayyumabad katchi abadi over 109.36 acres”. This effectively meant surrendering 53.22 acres to DHA Karachi.
The summary was received the same day and listed at number 6005 on the additional chief secretary local government’s inward register. “Sensing opposition from the local government department, the summary was swiftly withdrawn by the CS office,” revealed a retired secretary to the government of Sindh.
Later, a similar summary bearing exactly the same number was re-drafted and sent by the chief secretary’s office directly to the chief minister in sheer violation of rules of business, ie bypassing the administrative (local government) department input. Instead, after approval by the chief minister, the summary was sent to Waseem Akhtar, then MQM’s minister for local government (and current nominee for mayor), for implementation by his department.
Given this fait accompli, the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority re-notified the limits of Qayyumabad on Feb 2, 2005, reducing it to 109.36 acres. This, despite the fact that the amenities had been planned and notified 18 years earlier by the Sindh government’s Housing Town Planning, Local Government & Rural Development Department on Nov 13, 1986 and gazetted by the Sindh government on Feb 12, 1987.
According to KMC officials, the duplicitous manner in which the land was surrendered suggests it was not just the pressure exerted by the men in khaki, but that individuals in the higher echelons of the Sindh government were adequately compensated through allotment of plots in the area.
Interestingly, the ministry of defence’s original pretext while requesting allotment of land in Karachi was that it was required “for the benefit of the widows and children of the shuhada”, which later evolved into “for the benefit of officers of the defence forces who have little or no other means to put a roof over their heads”. However, according to a former member land utilisation, BoR Sindh, the allotees of the Qayyumabad amenities land are all well-known commercial developers and investors with deep pockets.
Here it is pertinent to note that as per law, a piece of land once declared as an amenity not only cannot be put to commercial or residential use, it cannot even be used as another kind of amenity than the one specified.
In a cruel irony, the numbers assigned to ‘Humayun Commercial’ plots — land that rightfully belongs to Qayyumabad katchi abadi — were re-designated and prefaced with the letters ‘QK’ during Mr Athar Ali’s tenure as corps commander. As things stand today, the amenities’ land has all been allotted and continues to change hands at the DHA Karachi office.
Moreover, some of the allottees, as per documents available with Dawn, have paid a mere Rs 4,000 per square yard to DHA Karachi for these commercial plots that are today being traded at Rs200,000 per sq yard — which adds up to an eye-watering one billion rupees an acre. To put things in perspective, consider this: DHA Karachi charges Rs16,000 per square yard as development charges alone in DHA Phase VIII from an ordinary allottee of 1987. Another example: DHA Karachi has charged Rs 120,000 per square yard for commercialisation of residential plots near Do Darya in Phase VIII.
Meanwhile, not far from where the elite of the city live in luxurious residences, where their children attend expensive private schools and have access to landscaped neighbourhood parks, the chance that the residents of Qayyumabad will get the spaces for their amenities back seems slimmer than ever. As if to drive the point home, DHA Karachi has erected a wall that runs approximately 5,000 feet along the periphery of the katchi abadi, separating it from the rest of DHA, cleaving the haves from the have-nots.
When asked about the Qayyumabad residents’ right to amenities, DHA Administrator Brigadier Zubair Ahmed said: “I agree on a humane level that every locality should have amenities.” He further added: “If the Sindh government says it’s not DHA land but belongs to the katchi abadi people, then we will change our stance. Until they say that, I as administrator DHA cannot surrender this land because I’m custodian of DHA’s interests and what has been given to us officially, I need to defend it until the time it is modified.”
However, some months ago, reportedly as a result of pressure by the army chief, the illegal allotment of 530 acres of mangrove forest along Gizri Creek — whose ultimate beneficiary was DHA — was cancelled after an expose in Dawn. Can Qayyumabad’s residents expect the authorities to take note of their legitimate expectations to a reasonable quality of life as citizens of Karachi?
Header photo by Fahim Siddiqi