Picture shows the bulldozing of Sector I-11 in Islamabad. PHOTO: EXPRESS
The Senate chairman has referred the issue of the I-11 settlement’s establishment, those responsible for its past expansion, and its recent demolition to the relevant house committee for probe.
The house on Wednesday witnessed a heated debate over the settlement when it discussed a motion moved by Awami National Party Senator Sittara Ayaz.
Condemning the forced eviction, lawmakers irrespective of their party affiliations demanded the release of all activists and dwellers of the slum who have been arrested by the police and asked the government to rehabilitate them and announce a compensation package.
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“Interior minister told us the occupants were terrorists, miscreants, and plunderers. But media and those who visited the site only found damaged belongings under the debris of mud houses,” Ayaz said.
The Senator told a story of a settlement’s resident from Mohmand Agency. She said his house in the tribal area was demolished by terrorists, which forced him to migrate to Islamabad. And now, Ayaz said, the state had demolished his mud house.
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Taj Haider said the slum residents — who have faced the worst form of terrorism — are now facing state-backed terrorism charges in courts.
Haider suggested a comprehensive mechanism to regulate katchi abadis in Islamabad on the pattern of the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority which regulated 1,600 slums in Sindh.
Senator Mushahid Hussain said “Irregular settlements of the rich in Banigala and Chak Shahzad have never been touched by the authorities.”
Senator Farhatullah Babar of PPP said the “CDA misled when it claimed that only illegal Afghan refugees were living there”.
Babar said the armed forces were allotted land in Islamabad and were violating land use norms when they constructed housing colonies, golf clubs, and other recreational centres, but no one questioned them.
The never-ending inquiry
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said at a press conference on Tuesday that “there should be an inquiry against corrupt officials of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) who let grow the recently demolished slum in Sector I-11.”
The minister made the comment in the backdrop of the civic agency’s operation against informal settlements.
The minister probably does not remember that he himself ordered this particular inquiry.
In April last year, Nisar had directed the CDA chairman to move against officials who let the I-11 settlement pop up in 2007, barely two years after it was successfully vacated in 2005.
Getting directions from the Interior Ministry, a two-man inquiry committee was formed whose mandate was to determine lapses and responsibilities on behalf of officials who served in the CDA’s katchi abadi cell and enforcement wing from 2007 to 2013.
In that time period, the settlement witnessed unprecedented growth and expanded beyond limits, occupying individuals properties located at Sector I-11/1.
In 2005, the settlement’s inhabitants were successfully removed following a massive eviction operation by CDA and ICT Administration on court orders. But by 2007, the settlement had started coming back to life.
Despite the passage of 16 months, the city managers have yet to complete the inquiry — which is among almost 150 departmental pending inquiries.
The inquiry committee was headed by former CDA director-general administration Sohail Durrani, who was later repatriated to his parent department in February 2015.
Durrani told The Express Tribune that he had completed 40 per cent of the inquiry when he was repatriated.
Without sharing further information, Durrani said he had surrendered the half-completed inquiry to CDA’s HR department.
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When contacted, CDA’s HR director-general Nadeem Akbar Malik said the status of this specific inquiry was not in his knowledge.
After CDA had demolished the slum in 2005, a number of dwellers had alleged that they paid huge bribes to CDA officials to get a piece of land there once again. It was also alleged that CDA staffers were paid monthly stipends to ‘look the other way’.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 6th, 2015.
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