You gotta break the law to maintain it
KARACHI:
When there is no room, or money to get room, law-enforcers will bend the rules to get what they need. As a result, 169 police stations in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur divisions have been established illegally in defunct municipality buildings, schools, dispensaries, and even on drains and amenity plots.
Police occupying such land refuse to evacuate or pay rent to the owners, despite several complaints and reminders, officials have said.
Meanwhile, police officials told The Express Tribune that they have written to the home department and they will vacate the premises when replacement buildings are provided - a prospect that does not seem very likely considering that a project offering to do this was excluded from the Sindh budget.
Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Anwar Maher, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Sindh Assembly on the Home Department, said that the committee had proposed to provide buildings to the police under the new Sindh budget. But, unfortunately, the scheme has not been included. He said that whatever buildings police do have are in dilapidated condition and many of them are without roofs.
Whatever the reason, the facts come down to this. In Karachi, it is reported, 48 of the total 104 police stations are built illegally, while 73 stations in Sukkur division and 48 in Hyderabad are also breaking the law by their mere existence.
According to officials, the Jamshed town administration has written to the home department on several occasions, asking them to get these buildings, several of them belonging to the now defunct Karachi municipality, evacuated. The Mehmoodabad police, the encroachers in this case, do not feel the need to act yet.
Neither do their counterparts in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, who have taken over a school building there.
Town administrations are not the only ones fed up with this encroachment. The Karachi president of the Union of Journalists, Khurshid Abbasi, also complained that two amenity plots in the journalists’ colony in Gulshan-e-Iqbal have been forcibly occupied. Instead of the health centre and club, which the journalists had planned to build, there is the Mubina town police station.
Some of the owners have gone to court against this occupation. One such case led to the Baloch Colony police having to leave a bungalow in PECHS that they had taken over. Although the bungalow had been given to the police on rent, a few months into the deal the police decided there was no need to continue dishing out the cash. Now their station has been set up on a drain near Defence View.
A similar story unfolded with the Samanabad Police Station in Gulberg. The station was demolished a month ago after the owner of the plot challenged the police’s occupancy in court.
Samanabad SHO, Sibtain, said that the station which was demolished had been built on a plot near Ancholi around 15 years ago. “Now we are working on the top floor of our Town Police Office,” he said.
The Sukhan Police Station is on a railway plot in Bhains Colony. According to the railway department’s spokesman, there is not only one police installation, but several check posts occupying their land in different parts of the city.
Offices or homes, the police seem to build what they want where they want. “Whenever police and paramilitary forces don’t find any place to live, they occupy either schools or amenity plots,” said Zahid Hussain of the Urban Resource Centre, a nonprofit organisation that focuses on different problems in the city. “There are also several check posts of district and traffic police which have been established on drain storms (nullahs).”
Hussain said that the Paposhnagar and Shahrae Noor Jahan police stations were first encroaching on the pavements, and then were built in playgrounds. Residents’ complaints bore no fruit and the police stayed put. “It is difficult to get rights back from them [police], especially here in the police state,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Karachi, Waseem Ahmed, while talking to media, said that more than 40 check posts that had been built illegally have been demolished. For its part, the home department simply shrugged off the responsibility. As the Additional Home Secretary (Admin), Shafqat Abbasi, said, the CCPO deals with this issue and the home department has nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, Additional Inspector General Police (AIGP) Finance, Dost Ali Baloch told the The Express Tribune that the plots on which police stations have been established are also the property of the government. Therefore, since the police also come under the government, occupying the land should be no problem.
When asked about the complaints made by different departments against the occupation, he said that many police stations are paying rent to the owners and very soon the police will be given their own buildings.
However, not everyone seems to agree that most of the police are paying rent. For instance, the Mauripur Police Station is situated in a house that had been rented to them by the owner, Seher Bano, in 1972 at Rs100 per month. But the police stopped paying the minimal rent by 1980, sources alleged.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2010.
When there is no room, or money to get room, law-enforcers will bend the rules to get what they need. As a result, 169 police stations in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur divisions have been established illegally in defunct municipality buildings, schools, dispensaries, and even on drains and amenity plots.
Police occupying such land refuse to evacuate or pay rent to the owners, despite several complaints and reminders, officials have said.
Meanwhile, police officials told The Express Tribune that they have written to the home department and they will vacate the premises when replacement buildings are provided - a prospect that does not seem very likely considering that a project offering to do this was excluded from the Sindh budget.
Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Anwar Maher, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Sindh Assembly on the Home Department, said that the committee had proposed to provide buildings to the police under the new Sindh budget. But, unfortunately, the scheme has not been included. He said that whatever buildings police do have are in dilapidated condition and many of them are without roofs.
Whatever the reason, the facts come down to this. In Karachi, it is reported, 48 of the total 104 police stations are built illegally, while 73 stations in Sukkur division and 48 in Hyderabad are also breaking the law by their mere existence.
According to officials, the Jamshed town administration has written to the home department on several occasions, asking them to get these buildings, several of them belonging to the now defunct Karachi municipality, evacuated. The Mehmoodabad police, the encroachers in this case, do not feel the need to act yet.
Neither do their counterparts in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, who have taken over a school building there.
Town administrations are not the only ones fed up with this encroachment. The Karachi president of the Union of Journalists, Khurshid Abbasi, also complained that two amenity plots in the journalists’ colony in Gulshan-e-Iqbal have been forcibly occupied. Instead of the health centre and club, which the journalists had planned to build, there is the Mubina town police station.
Some of the owners have gone to court against this occupation. One such case led to the Baloch Colony police having to leave a bungalow in PECHS that they had taken over. Although the bungalow had been given to the police on rent, a few months into the deal the police decided there was no need to continue dishing out the cash. Now their station has been set up on a drain near Defence View.
A similar story unfolded with the Samanabad Police Station in Gulberg. The station was demolished a month ago after the owner of the plot challenged the police’s occupancy in court.
Samanabad SHO, Sibtain, said that the station which was demolished had been built on a plot near Ancholi around 15 years ago. “Now we are working on the top floor of our Town Police Office,” he said.
The Sukhan Police Station is on a railway plot in Bhains Colony. According to the railway department’s spokesman, there is not only one police installation, but several check posts occupying their land in different parts of the city.
Offices or homes, the police seem to build what they want where they want. “Whenever police and paramilitary forces don’t find any place to live, they occupy either schools or amenity plots,” said Zahid Hussain of the Urban Resource Centre, a nonprofit organisation that focuses on different problems in the city. “There are also several check posts of district and traffic police which have been established on drain storms (nullahs).”
Hussain said that the Paposhnagar and Shahrae Noor Jahan police stations were first encroaching on the pavements, and then were built in playgrounds. Residents’ complaints bore no fruit and the police stayed put. “It is difficult to get rights back from them [police], especially here in the police state,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Karachi, Waseem Ahmed, while talking to media, said that more than 40 check posts that had been built illegally have been demolished. For its part, the home department simply shrugged off the responsibility. As the Additional Home Secretary (Admin), Shafqat Abbasi, said, the CCPO deals with this issue and the home department has nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, Additional Inspector General Police (AIGP) Finance, Dost Ali Baloch told the The Express Tribune that the plots on which police stations have been established are also the property of the government. Therefore, since the police also come under the government, occupying the land should be no problem.
When asked about the complaints made by different departments against the occupation, he said that many police stations are paying rent to the owners and very soon the police will be given their own buildings.
However, not everyone seems to agree that most of the police are paying rent. For instance, the Mauripur Police Station is situated in a house that had been rented to them by the owner, Seher Bano, in 1972 at Rs100 per month. But the police stopped paying the minimal rent by 1980, sources alleged.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2010.