Nazim Karachi Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that developing a park is indeed an easy job but it becomes very tough in Karachi where vacating occupied land and developing into park means fighting a war with the all powerful land mafia and exchange of gunfire.He expressed these views while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the reconstructed Jheel Park in PECHS on Thursday after the Governor of Sindh Dr. Ishrat-ul-Ebad Khan inaugurated the park.The City Nazim said that this is not happened anywhere in the world except for Karachi where the occupiers open fire when they are asked to vacate the government land.He said that the heads of the state had in past allotted plots to their loved ones at the land of Bagh Ibn-e-Qasim in Clifton while a total of 16 to 17 acres of old Jheel Park was also occupied by the land mafia. The Haq parast government has now recovered this precious land from the occupation of land mafia and opened it for public and the credit for this should go to Governor Sindh Dr. Ishrat-ul-Ebad Khan.
Nazim Karachi said that out of total 130 acres of Bagh Ibn-e-Qasim 70 acres was occupied and this was not possible for poor men to take up such an expensive land forcefully and these were only he near and dear ones of the past rulers who had done this.
“In such a situation this would have been very easy for Governor Sindh to occupy a 10 acre of the park land himself and a 5 acre for the City Nazim and then to put all the blame on the land mafia who had already occupied the place but the Haq Parast government believed in the resolution of citizens problems and provision of all basic facilities to them,” the City Nazim said and added that they received many phone calls from the top notch country officials to stop it when they started work at Bagh Ibn-e-Qasim. “but we did not listened to them and eventually succeeded in restoring public land and constructing a huge beautiful park where the people enjoy now.
He said that there was no empty piece of land in the densely populated PECHS especially near Tariq Road and a major part of the only old park in the area was occupied by the land mafia and the place was made centre of criminal activities and no go area for the people. When the city government bulldozers get their they started firing and we were threatened on telephone but the residents of this area would testify that we have not left even an inch of the government land in the hands of the mafia and now the 30 year old Jheel Park has once again available for public.
