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karachi needs a vigorous citizens campaign. be counted.

http://dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm


Kidney Hill	


By Ardeshir Cowasjee

MY column last week was devoted to Kidney Hill, a 62-acre area lying
between Karsaz Road and Shahid-e-Millat, the original 1966 park
notification showing 18 acres of the total devoted to a water
reservoir which would serve hundreds of thousands of citizens in the
adjoining residential societies.

 It related how three statutory agencies, including the federal,
provincial and city government, had signed in June 2006 an 'Agreement
of Settlement' to unlawfully convert two-thirds of this notified park
area neighbouring the Karachi Housing Cooperative Society area into
residential plots for the benefit of the neighbouring Overseas
Cooperative Housing Society (OCHS). (The agreement had annulled a 1984
Presidential Order forbidding any conversion or residential allotment
in this area.) Fourteen affected residents and the NGO Shehri filed a
petition in the Sindh High Court against this illegality.

 What was not mentioned in the column was that during the year
preceding this 'Agreement of Settlement' members of the OCHS had
several meetings with Sindh Governor Ishrat-ul Ebad on how this long
standing matter could be resolved. The resolution eventually turned
out to be the creation in the park of 120 residential plots of 400
square yards each, a project which would generate for various pockets
and funds approximately Rs10 billion.

 The governor is quoted in yesterday's Dawn under the headline: "Parks
to be city's identity : governor". He stressed that "parks and games
activities were the guarantee of a peaceful atmosphere of any city and
all round development activities were a manifestation of the vision of
the government and the emerging parks in every part of the city were a
reflection that the people want peace." Where does this leave Kidney
Hill?

 The column also told how the 14 local residents of the Kidney Hill
area, who had petitioned the Sindh High Court against the carving out
of plots from parkland, had withdrawn the public-interest petition,
stating "we regret not to elaborate a reason". It is a sad day for any
country when the government of the day 'persuades' its citizens from
pleading for their rights in a court of law.

 On February 22, 2007, an appeal by the sole remaining petitioner,
Shehri, was printed in the Metropolitan section of this newspaper,
dateline Karachi, February 20: "Shehri has been trying to save Kidney
Hill, an amenity plot of park space in KCSH Union area. The case is
fixed in the High Court for February 22, 2007.

 "Since the withdrawal of the 15 local residents, Shehri is the only
petitioner left. Over the past two days, even Sherhri members have
begun to receive threats on the telephone, warning them to get out of
the case -- or else!

 "In order to diffuse the threat and establish that more residents of
Karachi than just Shehri are actually interested in saving open spaces
for our future generations, we are urging NGOs and concerned citizens
to become interveners or to file a separate case that can be joined
with our case."Are you interested? Call us immediately at 453-0646 or
438-2298, or send us a return e-mail on info at shehri.org."

 (Nothing much happened on the 22nd other than the filing of a
vakalatnama by Barrister Abdul Hafeez Pirzada on behalf of the
Overseas Society, and an adjournment of the proceedings to a later
date.)

 In response, four concerned citizens and one NGO (Helpline Trust, Taj
Haider, Arif Hasan, Navaid Hussain and me) have given their
vakalatnamas to Barrister Gilbert Naim-ur-Rahman and an intervenor
application has been filed in the high court. Reportedly, the Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan is filing to be impleaded through
Barrister Kamal Azfar.

 Additionally, a number of political personalities and city
councillors, as reported in the lead story in the Metropolitan section
of Dawn on February 21, at a joint press conference the previous day
"reiterated their stance that the amenity plot could not be used for
any other purposes, saying, the Gutter Bagheecha land was an amenity
plot and no one had any right to convert it for any purpose. They
recalled the land had been declared a national park and a gift to the
people of Karachi by the president and warned that any attempt to
convert it for any other purpose would be met with resistance.

 "[it was] also alleged that the government had made an underhand deal
of the Kidney Hill Park land, alleging that attempts were being made
to convert all amenity plots for commercial purposes."

 Our 'authorities,' those who direct the governance of this city and
regulate our lives, and wittingly or unwittingly destroy and degrade
our environment were quick off the mark following my last Sunday's
column.

 The next day, February 19, the normal 'threats' began directed at
certain citizens involved in the Kidney Hill petition, the usual bumph
which unfortunately cannot be lightly dismissed as those behind it are
well practised in violence. These threats have continued through last
week, up to Friday.

 Inspector-General of Police, Sindh, Jehangir Mirza, and Chief
Secretary of the province Fazlur Rahman have both been made aware of
this somewhat dangerous situation and are taking full measures to
ensure that no harm comes to citizens under their watch.

 The final paragraph of last week's column also told of the
'commercialisation' of the five-acre Webb playfield in the Lines Area
of Karachi by the Army Welfare Trust and Makro-Habib for the
construction of a 'Cash & Carry Store'. It emerges that Makro-Habib is
an old hand at the conversion of amenity spaces.

 A number of residents of Model Town Society in Lahore have been
battling in the Lahore High Court for the past year over the
'commercialisation' by Makro-Habib of 80 kanals (10 acres) of a garden
plot in their society.

 Quoted hereunder is an excerpt from the November 11, 2006,
observations of the learned single judge, Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed,
in the judgment handed down in the writ petition dealing with the
issue:

 "Similarly it was also stressed very vehemently that the proposed
project constitutes economic growth and will bring financial benefit
to the country, city and the locality. In this behalf, suffice it to
say that no doubt foreign investment is to be encouraged but foreign
investors are not above the law and must conform to laws of the land
and must necessarily also exhibit sensitivity to the rights and
privileges of the inhabitants of the area. The learned counsel for the
petitioner has rightly drawn the distinction between growth and
development. The two concepts are not synonymous and all growth must
be measured against the collateral damage accrued thereby. Even
otherwise, growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer
cell."

 History will record the growth of various forms of 'cancer' in our
society : the conversion of parks and playgrounds, the construction of
grandiose projects on the remaining open spaces and beaches, the
attempts to establish a 'world-class city' in Karachi, a city in which
over half its population resides in katchi abadis, where a polluted
and inadequate water supply is distributed, where 400 millions gallons
per day of raw sewage is dumped into the sea.

 The case of Kidney Hill, if pursued, and if the 'authorities'
understand and cooperate, may well provide a watershed in the case of
our infected environment.
e-mail: arfc at cyber.net.pk

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