Ghazi Road widening: Compensation issue hangs fire, work afoot

Bhatta Chowk traders and committee formed by the CM have yet to reach a settlement on the compensation amount.

LAHORE:

The National Logistics Cell has shut down Ghazi Road, from Bhatta Chowk up to the Lahore Ring Road interchange in Phase 8 of the Defence Housing Authority, and started work to widen it.

Meanwhile, the Bhatta Chowk traders and the committee formed by the chief minister have yet to reach a settlement on the compensation amount.

The traders’ representatives are demanding at least Rs3 million per marla, but some of them say they are ready to accept what the government is offering (Rs800,000 per marla).

Muhammad Ashraf, an Anjuman Tajiran Bhatta Chowk member, said the market value of a two marla shop was around Rs10 million.

“How can the government expect the traders to accept Rs1.6 million?”

He said it was difficult to predict the traders’ strategy because if some of them accept the government offer, it would be hard for others to resist. A shopkeeper at Bhatta Chowk said he was willing to accept the compensation the government was offering. He said he was reluctant because the Traders’ Association had yet to make a decision in this regard.

He said if he went ahead with the government proposal, he would still be left with half of his property. “With the Lahore Ring Road nearby and a wider Ghazi Road, my property will be worth much more than its current value,” he said. He said he intended to construct a plaza on the remaining plot once the widening work was complete.

MPA Yaseen Sohail, member of the committee formed by the chief minister to settle the issue, said if the traders disapproved of the rate they could move court.

However, he said they would never take such a step because they themselves had undervalued their properties in the registry document to evade taxes.

He said some of the traders had reported the value of their shops at Rs400,000.  Sohail said only those affected during the construction of Shalimar interchange were paid more (Rs1 million per marla).

He said the chief minister had directed for completion of the project in two months.

The NLC have been given the contract to increase the width of the 2.4 kilometre patch of Ghazi Road, from Rehman Villas up to the interchange, to 100-feet (two 12-feet-wide lanes on each side, a green-belt in the middle and footpaths on either side). The current width of Ghazi Road is 60 feet. A Project Management Unit official said that of the Rs1.835 billion allocated for the extension of Bhatta Chowk project, Rs485 million would be spent on construction and expansion work and the remaining to compensate the traders for the land used up in the project.

He said the road from Rehman Villas up to Bhatta Chowk would be widened in the second phase.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2011.