Upset woman makes a noise over din caused by BTS tower

Although she has moved to New York, she has still filed a petition in SHC.

KARACHI:

Sajida Kachelo may have just cost a couple of government official their jobs for failing to protect her rights - all the way from New York, USA.

In Pakistan, her four-year long struggle for the removal of a noise-creating mobile tower in Yar Muhammad Kachelo village in Jamshoro yielded no results. But the determined woman doesn’t seem ready to back down. Kachelo has now taken the provincial governor’s principal secretary, Kotri town municipal administration, the police superintendent in Jamshoro, a telecommunication company and Amir Bux Kachelo, another resident of the village, to the court over the mobile tower’s installation.

In her petition, Kachelo said that she lives in New York, USA, but also owns a house in Yar Muhammad Kachelo village. On July 5, 2008, she filed a complaint with the provincial ombudsman, seeking the removal of a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) tower installed by a telecommunication company in an open plot in one of the village’s residential areas.

“There is no electricity in the village and the tower is being supplied power through its own power generator,” Kachelo told the ombudsman. “The generator creates noise and disturbs the residents.”

The petitioner said she had also approached the town’s administration, police and telecommunication company which the tower belong to, requesting them to remove it since it was disturbing the residents of the neigbourhood. But they didn’t do anything.

On November 29, 2010, the ombudsman gave the municipal administration one month to remove the tower as the No Objection Certificate issued for its installation had been cancelled. But there was still another hiccup. Amir Bux Kachelo, another resident from the village who Kachelo describes as “influential”, filed an appeal to the governor, circumventing the ombudsman’s order.

The petitioner alleged that the governor was not making a decision on Amir Bux’s appeal, unnecessarily delaying the removal of the tower. “This is against the fundamental rights of the citizens which have been guaranteed in the Constitution,” her lawyer, Mohram Baloch, told the judges on Saturday. The lawyer then asked the court to direct the governor to make a decision.

After hearing the arguments, Chief Justice Mushir Alam noted that if there was no restraining order against then the ombudsman’s decision to remove the tower, then this should be done. The governor is unnecessarily delaying a decision on the appeal challenging the ombudsman’s order, the lawyer told the judge.

The bench said that the petitioner may file an application for contempt proceedings before the ombudsman, who may seek the enforcement of its order.

Adjourning the hearing for four weeks, the bench also directed a provincial law officer Miran Muhammad Shah to ask the governor’s principal secretary why a decision was not being made on Amir Bux’s appeal.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 13^th, 2013.