KARACHI: Welcoming the demolition of illegal Afghan Basti on the M-9 Superhighway, Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Altaf Shakoor here Sunday demanded that all other illegal settlements in the megacity should either be regularised or demolished as per law.
He said the Afghan Basti had been a den of crimes and drug selling. It is a welcome move to get it demolished. He suggested that the land of the former Afghan Basti should be used to develop a modern park, as the megacity faces a huge lack of parks, gardens and green spaces.
Altaf Shakoor said there are hundreds of other illegal and irregular settlements in Karachi that should be properly regularised. He said land grabbing is the most lucrative business in Karachi and the land grabbers occupy government and private lands and sell them to people who make slums and Katchi Abadies over them. He said if the KDA starts low-cost housing schemes the need for illegal and irregular settlements could be decreased to a large extent.
PDP Chairman said that with regularisation of Katchi Abadies, Karachi could really be made a modern city. He said the government should work according to the master plan of Karachi and ensure modernisation of slums to bring them at par with the developed neighbourhoods.
He said that in fact the megacity needs dozens of new low-cost housing schemes, and barren lands available in Gadap and Bin Qasim Towns could be easily used for this purpose. He said all the suburb areas of Karachi should be linked to the downtown city through road and rail networks. In this regard the revival and expansion of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) and a fast-paced work on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects is a must. He also demanded to resume work of the second phase of Green Line BRT immediately as it would greatly facilitate the megacity commuters.
Altaf Shakoor hoped that the empty land of the Afghan Basti would be used to develop a park, besides working on urgent regularisation of all other illegal settlements in Karachi.
