Slum dwellers across Sindh to get property rights

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Tuesday the Katchi Abadi dwellers across Sindh would get ownership rights and assured that a drive to protect the slum areas in the province will be launched from next month.

Addressing a lease distribution ceremony in Larkana, the PPP chairman said that his party never opposed award of plots to any judge, bureaucrat or anyone else. He expressed the hope no-one would object to giving the poor their due share.

Bilawal said that the first thing Prime Minister Imran Khan did was to regularise his Bani Gala home for a small fee. “We hoped that when the prime minister was regularising his house, the same policy would be applied to the slums across the country. But instead, the slums were demolished one after another.”

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The PPP chairman said that he was proud of the people of Larkana who formed organisations to save their homes, and started a movement. “Today, that movement has been successful,” he said. “A new journey begins today,” he added.

“Ownership rights will be given to slum dwellers across Sindh, where they have been living for 40 years. The task of rescuing the slums will be intensified from February. We will do our best to give the poor people their rights,” he said.

“If the people support us, we will build a Pakistan where everyone is provided with the rights they deserve. The journey that has started today from the slums of Larkana will start in the whole of Sindh. All the slum dwellers in Pakistan would get the property rights after the next election.”

At the ceremony, Bilawal handed over lease certificates to 150 people in the first phase of the project to give property rights to the slum dwellers of Larkana. Present on the occasion were Special Assistant to Chief Minister Sindh Liaquat Ali Askani and other party leaders.