Fund fight: 600 angry residents take DHA to court over charging for drains

The housing authority argues it never charged for infrastructure in the begining but needs to now.

KARACHI: Residents unhappy with the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) have taken it to court over its alleged use of underhanded tactics to coerce them into paying for storm water drains that they should not be charged for.

The Sindh High Court (SHC) will hear a petition against DHA on Thursday. The Refurbishment Charge was imposed in May 2009 as a way to raise funds for the construction of an underground system to carry rainwater to the sea. It was imposed after the devastating rains in 2007, in which many streets remained flooded for days. “We had to do something because the situation was critical,” said a DHA spokesman, Rafat Naqvi. “The executive committee decided to construct the drains immediately.” They were built from Phases I to VII. However, they were not built in Phase IV. “A lot of money was needed and we used the funds raised from the plots we sold in Phase VIII,” Naqvi said.

He agrees that DHA, being the developing body, should have foreseen the need for the rainwater drains when it first developed the area. But Naqvi said that the organisation did not charge its residents for the infrastructure when they first purchased propery there and has no other way of raising funds. “DHA does not receive grants from the government. How are we supposed to finance infrastructure development?” Naqvi did not disclose the cost of the construction or the amount of money that has been raised. Neither did he reveal how much DHA earns by fee it charges for processing property transactions and under various other heads. He did say that the court has asked them not to use force, but it has not stopped them from collecting the charge.

The residents beg to differ. They say that the development body has devised new coercive methods of extracting the charges.

The DHA officials have started asking them for money in return for giving them permission to paint or renovate their homes. “The organisation tells us that if we would like to be given permission to raise our walls, we will have to pay the refurbishment charge or go to hell,” said one angry resident.

Initially there were eight petitioners, including the Defence Society Residents Association, but now the number of petitioners has crossed 600. Justice Maqbool Baqar will hear the petition and a well-known constitutional expert, Farogh Naseem, will appear on behalf of the residents. A number of hearings on the matter have already been heard by Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany before he was elevated to the Supreme Court.  “We are really hoping that the judge would stop DHA from collecting the charges,” said a petitioner. Some unconfirmed reports said that DHA had earlier assured the residents that cost of the whole project would not exceed Rs700 million but more recent estimates have been placed in excess of Rs2.3 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2011.