KARACHI: Pasban Democratic Party PDP Chairman Altaf Shakoor here Sunday said that residents are at the recieving end as corruption has marred majority of the private housing society but the related government departments are least concerned about this pressing issue.
He said managing bodies of these cooperative housing societies are comprised of the most corrupt and crook people whose main concern is to occupy and sell amenity plots and other facilities. These bodies are elected year after year due to their great skills in corrupt whealing and dealing. Police and other anti-corruption watchdogs, as well as, the ruling political parties give shelter to them for bribery and kickbacks.
He said recently a scandal was surfaced of handing a school of Kathiawar Housing Society to an ‘education mafia’. He said such malpractices are routine in almost all private housing societies of the megacity where the managing bodies consider the above the law.
He said the department of the Sindh government that oversees the affairs of the cooperative societies is a den of making black money. Corruption is rife in this department and the notoriously corrupt officers are posted in this department to collect corruption money and give due share of it to their bosses. He said anti-corruption watchdogs should look into the dirty affairs of this unruly department to ensure some relief for the Karachiites.
Altaf Shakoor said sadly the megacity is facing huge shortage of housing units. He said Karachi Development Authority (KDA) has not presented any new housing scheme for many decades. He said the megacity urgently needs at least one million new low-cost housing units to cater the needs of citizens who are left on the mercy of real estate mafia.
He said in fact the megacity Karachi needs a chain of new satellite towns to lessen pressure of the main city. He said we have repeatedly proposed to develop Karachi-Hyderabad and Karachi-Keti Bander industrial corridors with new satellite towns along them to deal with the issues of joblessness as well as scarcity of housing facilities. However, the federal and Sindh governments are not interested to resolve these pressing problems.
Altaf Shakoor demanded of the police, anti-corruption department, FIA, NAB and security agencies to open special cells to probe mega corruption and mismanagement in the provate cooperative housing societies of Karachi so as to provide relief to their residents and save their amenity plots and facilities from land mafia.
