LARKANA: The PPP Larkana district chapter, led by Mayor Anwar Ali Nawaz Luhar, took out a protest rally on Friday against the local authorities of the Pakistan Railways for ordering the bulldozing of dwellings along rail tracks.
A number of PPP activists and affected people took part in the rally which started from the Begum Nusrat Bhutto Library Hall and culminated at the city’s railway station.
They condemned the operation to raze poor peoples’ homes and other structures along the LarkanaKarachi tracks which, they said, was rendering several hundred fam-ilies homeless.
Prominent among those who accompanied Mayor Luhar at the rally were the Town Committee Chairman, Waqar Bhutto, a UC Chairman, Shafiq Ahmed Chandio, and a senior PPP activist, Sarfaraz Khokhar.
While passing through the Ghanti Phatak (level crossing) before reaching the Larkana station, the rally participants displayed banners inscribed with slogans against the railways authorities and raised slogans against PR’s Larkana administration.
Speaking to the protesters and media personnel, Mayor Luhar said that PR’s demolition squad had been razing people’s homes, huts and otherstructures for the last 15 days in its so-called anti-encroachment drive.
‘We strongly condemn this drive,’ he said, and expressed solidarity with the affected families.
During the unprecedented floods in 2022, when residents of these dwellings needed relief and rescue, the PR administration did not respond to their frantic calls. Nor did it come out with the claim of the ownership of the land, which houses the Railway Colony. ‘It was PPP lawmaker Jamil Ahmed Soomro who got the relief and rehabilitation work done in this Colony,’ the mayor recalled, and deplored that the administration woke up to claim ownership of PR properties now when PPP carried out all development works there.
He said that the railway administration was troubling the poor people in order to conceal its own incompetence.
Mr Luhar alleged that onlyLarkana district was being targeted in the ongoing operation, and argued that in Punjab, large apartment complexes had been built on PR’s lands, yet no such operation was being carried out there. In all other such actions also, the PR’s focus has been only Larkana, Dadu and other cities of Sindh, according to him.
Themayornoted thatthe Larkana Municipal Corporation had maintained parks and planted trees near the LMC Stadium, and asked that under what authority the railways was handing over these parks to others for commercial purposes without LMC’s permission. ‘Who would be responsible for the resulting drainage and infrastructure problems?’ he asked.
Mayor Luhar also deplored that several poor people were beaten and injured by the PR workers during the demolition drive on Thursday. After the violent incident, the LMC intervened and gotthe operation suspended, he said.
He warned that if the operation was resumed, the LMC would resist it alongside the affected citizens.’PPP Chairman Bilawal BhuttoZardari and we stand with the people of Larkana, and we will not leave them alone,’ he declared.