Double trouble: The displaced, from last year and this one, fear eviction
Men came to tell makeshift camp on Super Highway to dismantle.
KARACHI:
The disaster just seems to keep coming - not just for the people displaced by last year’s floods but the fresh victims. Over 800 families, who took refuge in a camp on the Super Highway, are afraid they will be evicted in the next few days.
The trouble surfaced two days ago, says camp coordinator Farrukh Shah. At around 11 pm on Tuesday night, 70 men surrounded the camp and asked its occupants to leave. The group was led by a man called Shahab, who identified himself as a contractor for the Pakistan Army.
Shahab told them that the area they were occupying was meant for a cattle sale and that the contractor had paid Rs15 million for it. The residents pleaded with them as they had nowhere else to go.
The next morning, police mobiles from the nearby Sachal police station arrived to arrest Shah but he managed to avoid them, aided by the fact that there were a number of television channel teams filming the camp. An officer with the police station denied this, however.
The camp appears to be technically illegal. According to Shah, it was set up once camps closed down elsewhere in Sindh and relief work halted last year. “They just started arriving here in wagons and buses,” he recalled. “And this year’s flood victims started arriving on September 9.”
The freshly uprooted families number 335 and at least 200 of them are Hindu. They came to Karachi after being ‘mistreated’, as Shah put it. There have been numerous reports that Hindu families, particularly from the Dalit caste, have not been left by the wayside when it came to rations and relief goods, something which prompted President Asif Ali Zardari to take notice.
Shah, who calls himself a social worker, said that last year’s flood survivors managed to get blue-collar jobs - such as working at the Sabzi mandi or at petrol pumps, and they are trying to get sewing machines for the women. “These people toiled on the lands and so they have no [other] skills,” he said. “On Tuesday, when we needed someone to drive a car, there wasn’t a single man who knew how to.”
These camp residents have been living in tents for the past year, but those who have just moved in do not have any form of housing. “We have 20 tents for them, which MNA Sherry Rehman sent through the Indus Foundation.”
A military spokesperson in Karachi referred inquiries to the Malir Cantonment Board’s Cantonment Executive Officer. However, calls to the board were unsuccessful as an official who answered the phone said that the executive officer and all high-ranking officers were unavailable since they were touring the area with a visiting director.
“If they want to put us in jail, they can arrange for rations and health and education services. We will willingly go,” Shah said.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 29th, 2011.
The disaster just seems to keep coming - not just for the people displaced by last year’s floods but the fresh victims. Over 800 families, who took refuge in a camp on the Super Highway, are afraid they will be evicted in the next few days.
The trouble surfaced two days ago, says camp coordinator Farrukh Shah. At around 11 pm on Tuesday night, 70 men surrounded the camp and asked its occupants to leave. The group was led by a man called Shahab, who identified himself as a contractor for the Pakistan Army.
Shahab told them that the area they were occupying was meant for a cattle sale and that the contractor had paid Rs15 million for it. The residents pleaded with them as they had nowhere else to go.
The next morning, police mobiles from the nearby Sachal police station arrived to arrest Shah but he managed to avoid them, aided by the fact that there were a number of television channel teams filming the camp. An officer with the police station denied this, however.
The camp appears to be technically illegal. According to Shah, it was set up once camps closed down elsewhere in Sindh and relief work halted last year. “They just started arriving here in wagons and buses,” he recalled. “And this year’s flood victims started arriving on September 9.”
The freshly uprooted families number 335 and at least 200 of them are Hindu. They came to Karachi after being ‘mistreated’, as Shah put it. There have been numerous reports that Hindu families, particularly from the Dalit caste, have not been left by the wayside when it came to rations and relief goods, something which prompted President Asif Ali Zardari to take notice.
Shah, who calls himself a social worker, said that last year’s flood survivors managed to get blue-collar jobs - such as working at the Sabzi mandi or at petrol pumps, and they are trying to get sewing machines for the women. “These people toiled on the lands and so they have no [other] skills,” he said. “On Tuesday, when we needed someone to drive a car, there wasn’t a single man who knew how to.”
These camp residents have been living in tents for the past year, but those who have just moved in do not have any form of housing. “We have 20 tents for them, which MNA Sherry Rehman sent through the Indus Foundation.”
A military spokesperson in Karachi referred inquiries to the Malir Cantonment Board’s Cantonment Executive Officer. However, calls to the board were unsuccessful as an official who answered the phone said that the executive officer and all high-ranking officers were unavailable since they were touring the area with a visiting director.
“If they want to put us in jail, they can arrange for rations and health and education services. We will willingly go,” Shah said.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 29th, 2011.