Civil society distressed by anti-encroachment drives targeting the poor.

Byline: Shazia Hasan

KARACHI -- To show solidarity with the affectees of the anti-encroachment drives that took place in the city last year, members of civil society called a press conference to share an open letter written by them to the political parties of Sindh at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday.

Reading out the letter, Zahid Farooq of the Urban Resource Centre pointed out how the sudden removal of encroachments from the Empress Market and along the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) tracks had added to the misery of people with an increase in unemployment and poverty. 'There have been too many folks affected by the government's action in the first phase alone, and now the second phase promising far more devastation is hanging like a sword over these poor people's heads.

'While the small businesses of vendors around the Empress Market were wrapped up and their children pulled out of schools because the parents just couldn't afford to educate them, the KCR affectees are living in piles of rubble under the open sky. They are not just experiencing unemployment and poverty but mental torture, too. The circumstances of some [have] even pushed them to suicide,' he said, adding that such types of severe action only targeted the poor while illegal encroachments in the posh areas of Karachi continued.

'The entire city is an encroachment'

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan said that the encroachments were there in the first place because of the governments' failure in providing the people the facilities they needed. 'That's how unplanned and haphazard development takes place as the city grows. There was no planning for businesses, for industry, for workers, etc. Where there was a need for warehouses they came up wherever people needed storage, where there was a need of the people to find dwelling, they built small huts and the katchi abadis came up. There were no planned bus terminals. Those too came up according to the requirements of people and thus the entire city is an encroachment,' he said.

Writes open letter to political parties in Sindh

'But still it is a living city and the Supreme Court's saying to turn it into how it used to be years ago was very strange, because how can one turn back the clock? Also it is important to mention here that the informal or street economy contributed 30 to 40 per cent to the country's total economy. It was a big sector of our economy which we killed by turning against our small business folk. There are...