KARACHI: After the federal government announced the sacking of more than 9,000 employees of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), the industrial giant is now facing another serious problem: a land dispute with the Sindh government.
Per sources, the Sindh government is insisting that the land on which the PSM is established would be taken back if the mills are not operational. At the same time, people residing near the mills have claimed that some of PSM’s property legally belongs to them.
The PSM management, however, says that the land solely belongs to the mills as it was purchased from the Sindh government as well as area residents.
The PSM is spread over 19,000 acres of land. Of the total, about 4,457 acres are occupied by the steel manufacturing plants, while over 8,000 acres are allocated to Steel Town - the residential colony of PSM.
Some land was also reserved for the establishment of another residential colony named Gulshan-e-Hadeed. Sources say that Gulshan-e-Hadeed is not the sole property of the PSM because residential plots in the area were sold out to PSM employees.
Apart from houses, Steel Town has over a dozen educational institutions built on its premises, including the Steel Cadet College. What’s more, cricket and hockey stadiums and a three-star hotel are also housed within the colony.
According to the official PSM records, the total land allocated to Steel Town was 8,080 acres. Out of this, over 6,933 acres were purchased from the Sindh government, while 1,147 acres of land was bought from area locals.
The records also show that in 2006, the Sindh government took about 1,377 acres of land for the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) to set up engineering and technical universities therein.
The PSM had also provided some 930 acres of land to the federal government for the establishment of Bin Qasim Industrial Park, part of the National Industrial Park project of the Pakistan Industrial Development Company (PIDC).
“Some 426 acres of PSM’s land has been encroached upon by private parties, including land grabbers,” a senior PSM official, who asked not to be named, told The Express Tribune.
The Sindh government has claimed that it provided the land to the PSM for operational purposes under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. According to provincial labour and education minister Saeed Ghani, if the land is not being used for operational purposes, it should be returned to the Sindh government.
Like the government, area residents have claimed that the PSM has still not paid them for the land that it acquired from them.
The chairperson of Union Council-18, Abdul Sattar Jokhio, claimed that area residents sold over 5,000 acres of land to the PSM for the establishment of the mills.
“It was private property owned by area residents. They sold it to the PSM in 1974 under the Land Acquisition Act,” he said. “The land covered Deh Joreji, Deh Koteriro, Deh Pipri, Deh Sanhro and Deh Bakran. The owners of the land have been repeatedly asking the PSM for payment, but they did not receive a penny. Since people are now frustrated, they want their land back.”
PSM spokesperson Chaudhry Muhammad Afzal, however, rejected the claims made by the Sindh government as well as the area residents. “The land is the sole property of the PSM since it purchased it from the Sindh government and private parties,” he stressed.
It is pertinent to mention that the Federal Production Ministry had approached the Supreme Court in 2019 to sell PSM’s land for paying outstanding dues to 5,000 retired employees of the PSM. The plea, however, was rejected.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 11th, 2020.
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