As deadline expires all residents vacate Nasla Tower

Only few flats belonging to overseas Pakistanis remain locked

KARACHI:

With sullen faces and teary eyes, residents of Nasla Tower were racing against the deadline to vacate the building on the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The evacuation of the building continued till dusk on Sunday evening, while neighbours were making efforts to contact people who were overseas to get their apartments vacated. The Supreme Court of Pakistan had ruled on demolishing the building built partly on the service lane in the Sindhi Muslim Cooperative Housing Society.

The builder had connived with the government officials who had turned a blind eye to the illegal construction. The victims of the building scam paid inflated wages to the workers to move their belongings on the Sunday deadline. There is no family left in the building now. The work of vacating the remaining flats on the first, third and seventh floors of the building continued till dusk.

A citizen living on the first floor said that goods worth millions of rupees were destroyed in the rush to haul them away. "Only we know the pain and grief with which we are leaving the apartments we called our homes which we had bought with so many efforts and decorated with love and hope," he said refusing to give his name lest someone files a contempt of court plea against him.

The loading vehicles were brought on the 4th floor parking space of the Nasla Tower to facilitate evacuation. Drivers of pickups and minitrucks kept making rounds throughout the day till late in the evening to haul away the belongings of the people who had made the mistake of buying or renting out apartments of a building built illegally by the construction company with connivance of Sindh government officials.

The labourers used the lift to bring the valuables home appliances including refrigerators, air conditioners, furniture, decorative items, kitchen ware and pile them in the vehicles which were immediately shifted. Residents said that only those flats whose occupants were out of the country could not be vacated. However, all such owners have been contacted and the flats will be vacated in the next few days. The building's security camera wiring and other key installations are also being removed.