Accommodating milkmen: City government to set up four new colonies

Existing colonies to be abolished once new ones are set up, says DCO.

LAHORE: The city government district government of Lahore (CDGL) is identifying land to set up four new colonies for milkmen, district coordination officer (DCO) Ahad Cheema said on Wednesday.

Talking to The Express Tribune, the DCO said the CDGL realised that there was a need for more colonies as the existing colonies had run out of space to accommodate the rising population of milkmen and their herds.

Besides, he said, with the city stretching eastwards the existing colonies at Harbanspura and Rakh Chandray (Chungi Amar Sadhu) now fell inside the city. These, he said, were now located quite close to residential schemes and were creating problems for their residents.

DCO Cheema said once new colonies were established the existing facilities would be disbanded and all illegal cattle sheds across the city demolished.

He said the milkmen had proposed a site for establishing a colony in Shahdara but there had been no progress because the land was owned by the Forest Department.

Residents of these Gowala Colonies said the colonies had become congested with time. They said there was an urgent need to set up more colonies.

Muhammad Ashraf, a resident of Harbanspura colony, said almost half of the land in the colony was taken by the government for the construction of the Lahore Ring Road and a Journalists Colony. He said those evicted during the Ring Road construction were compensated, but people residing on the land allotted for journalists’ colony got no compensation.

Ilyas Usman, another resident of the Harbanspura colony, said that former DCO Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta had agreed tin principle to their suggestion for setting up more colonies.

“We recommended setting up nine colonies but the DCO agreed to six,” he said, adding that there should be at least one gowala colony to serve each town of the city. The land for Harbanspura Colony was allotted 35 years ago.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2010.