Lyari Expressway: Administrator to give up house for petitioners

CDGK takes U-turn, says it can’t pay compensation.


Express May 30, 2011

KARACHI:


One hundred people displaced by the Lyari Expressway cost the city government administrator his residence as a court ruled they could occupy it because of a delay in compensation.


On Monday, the Sindh High Court’s Justices Gulzar Ahmed and Shahid Anwar Bajwa were hearing a petition filed by the displaced people who sued the city district government for the delayed compensation and alternate plots for the ones they gave up to make way for the project.

The court ordered the petitioners to occupy the bungalow of the administrator till the city government pays them and allots the plots.

As the petition came up for hearing, the city’s lawyer abandoned the stance taken at five previous hearings and said that as this project was the federal government’s responsibility, the city would be unable to pay. Earlier, the city had assured that the compensation would be paid.

This submission was also made in a statement by LEW Project Director Shafique-ur Rahman Piracha, who said that the Lyari Expressway was a federally funded programme and therefore funds were to be provided by the federal government while the city and and LEW were the joint executing authorities.

The bench was so irked by this new argument that it ordered the petitioners to occupy the residence of the administrator of Karachi and continue to live there till the city paid up. The court also ordered the attachment of the CDGK accounts till the court’s order is complied with.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 31st, 2011.

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