Post office employees demolish lawyers’ chambers

Say land was allotted to them and will not be allow to be encroached upon

ISLAMABAD: Days after lawyers woke up to find their chambers torn down at the district courts in Sector F-8 Kutchery, lawyers on Monday that another set of their chambers — allegedly built on land owned by Pakistan Post — had been torn down in the Kutchery.

After their chambers had been torn down early on Friday morning, protesting lawyers had started rebuilding their chambers. On Sunday evening, they allegedly built some chambers on land originally allotted to Pakistan Post for setting up a post office in the Kutchery.

Post office employees, who confirmed they had demolished the newly built chambers, stated that the land belonged to the post office and not the lawyers, which is why they had torn down the structures, adding that they will now allow the encroachment of their land.

As the post office employees threw away bricks from dismantled chambers onto the road, a heavy contingent of police arrived.

Hazara Colony residents deter anti-encroachment drive

The mass of bricks disrupted traffic in front of the post office for some time as well.

The post office employees also staged a protest, chanting slogans against the lawyers. Some employees also held up placards which stated that “Some people, in the garb of lawyers, were grabbing state land”, “Remove encroachment around post office plot”, “government should take notice of encroachment on state land in federal capital”.

Post-Master General Laiq Zaman told Daily Express that the encroachment on post office land was a condemnable act.

“The post office employees have demolished the chambers and will not allow their reconstruction,” he said, adding that the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration had assured them of its support in this regard.

Meanwhile, Islamabad Bar Association President Riasat Ali Azad told Daily Express that the Master Plan of Islamabad did not have an inch of space for the courts, let alone chambers for lawyers.

“In Sector F-8, all the courts and chambers and even kutcheries are illegal and now it is the responsibility of the government and the judiciary to speed up the construction of complexes meant for lawyers,” Azad stated.

He added that there were as many as 5,000 lawyers in the kutchery and such encroachment and structures cannot be avoided unless proper arrangements are made for the lawyers.

Azad further said that the lawyers had built the chambers less than a week before they had been demolished last week.

However, it is unclear who carried out last week’s overnight demolition job even as people continue to question why was the construction allowed to continue in the first place.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2018.