Housing Ministry making efforts to retrieve grabbed land’

[Salman]

Housing Ministry making efforts to retrieve grabbed land’



ISLAMABAD: Minister for Housing and Works Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat has said that the ministry is vigorously pursuing the case of its usurped land worth of billions rupees by the land mafia across the country.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, he said 80 percent of the 775 acres of land had been taken over by illegal occupants in the heart of Karachi city, and the ministry had written a letter to the Sindh governor in this regard.

Likewise, in Murree, a guesthouse on 36 kanals of Pak-PWD land was also under the custody of a widow of a deceased lower-cadre employee of the ministry for the last 10 years, and the ministry was making efforts to recover it, he said, adding that a case was pending in court in this regard. He regretted that the ministry had huge land resources, but most of them were in the custody of ‘land mafia’.

He also said the ministry had sent the case of Bhara Kahu land scandal to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for further investigation. “A huge investment of the common people is stuck in the land fraud, and I request NAB authorities to help recover the amount as early as possible and take strict action against the culprits,” he said. The minister said that about 3,300 kanals of land had been purchased in 2009 on inflated rates of Rs 750,000 per kanal, which was against the actual market price of about Rs 45,000 per kanal.

He said that the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) was likely to announce the long-awaited sector G-14 awards this month. He further said that he was receiving frequent complaints from the Pak-PWD, and after thorough inquiry, corruption cases had been traced in projects like the construction of the Mal-Fatyana Bridge in Toba Tek Singh and State Guesthouse in Karachi.