Come out if you care about Karachi

A new bill threatens city’s parks and playgrounds.

KARACHI:

Not-for-profit Shehri-CBE is organising a peaceful rally against the proposed Sindh Protection and Prohibition of Amenity Plots Bill 2009 on Saturday, March 5, at 5pm at Mazaar-e-Quaid at the gate facing Numaish Roundabout where people will gather, shout slogans and hold a token march for about 20 minutes.

According to a Shehri press release on Friday, the deceptively named bill essentially states that the MPAs can change the use of amenity land and the bill is backdated to all actions from 1994.

This proposed bill describes an “amenity plot” as a piece of land granted, earmarked for use or intended to be used for parks, gardens, playgrounds, graveyards, roads, hospitals, schools, colleges, educational institutions, including nationalised and denationalised ones, health institutions, reading rooms, libraries, community centres, treatment plants, power houses, places for religious worship and open places kept for recreation or expansion other than residential, commercial, industrial or for cottage industry.

All these places will and can be changed and sold to private individuals to build commercial plazas, flat sites, offices etc.

This harmful and immoral bill means that any amenity land can be grabbed or the land that has already been illegally occupied since 1994 can acquire legal cover, said the press release. “If this bill becomes law it will legalise the actions of land grabbers, open the floodgates of corruption and totally destroy our Karachi and the other cities of Sindh.”

“We want the political parties to come forward and let the citizens know what is the objective behind this bill,” said Shehri. “What has prompted them to make a decision such as this. It violates the basic human right to life of every human being. The citizens [of Sindh’s cities] want this bill withdrawn and the law ministry to apologise to [them] for even allowing and considering such a bill.”

For further information, please visit Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment’s website www.shehri.org.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2011.