PESHAWAR: Provincial Minister for Auqaf Habibur Rehman on Monday admitted on the floor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly that his department was helpless to retrieve its properties worth billions of rupees occupied by the land grabbers since long in different areas of the province.

`The district administration of the respective districts doesn`t listen to the orders of my department to help it in retrieving its properties from the land grabbers,` the minister said while responding to a question of MPA Sardar Zahoor Ahmed.

He said that Supreme Court decided recently a case of 36,313kanal land located in Mardan in favour of Auqaf department but the same land couldn`t be retrieved from the land grabbers as the district administration was not coop-erating with them in that regard.

`Keeping in view my two and a half years experience being a minister of the Auqaf department, it is impossible to retrieve its properties as it couldn`t be done without the help of local administration, said the minister.

Besides land grabbers, he said, different government departments had also established their buildings on the lands of Auqaf department.

He said when he took over the ministry of Auqaf department in 2013, he drew the attention of the chief minister towards the issue and he ordered formation of a committee with the then additional chief secretary as its chairman.

`At that time I did efforts for holding a meeting of the committee and finally succeeded after a yearbut the additionalchiefsecretary took no interest in the matter,` the minister said. Since that meeting, the committee became redundant, he said.

The issue was raised by MPA Sardar Zahoor Ahmed through a question. His question was regarding the illegal occupation of Auqaf department`s properties inMansehra.

The MPA said that he had also raised theissuelastyearthrougha question and the reply was the same as given to his fresh question.

`Why the Auqaf department is so helpless to retrieve its land,` he questioned.

In the written reply to his question, the Auqaf department said that it owned a total of 5,396-kanal land in Mansehra, out of which 3,669-kanal was in the possession of land grabbers. For retrieving the land, the department was struggling since long but could not succee d, it added.

Sattar Khan of PML-N said that land of Auqaf department exclusively allocatedfor the graveyards in Mansehra was occupied by land grabber and everyone in the government knew it.

`Are some people (land grabbers) above the law,` Sardar Aorangzaib Nalotha of PML-N asked in his supplementary question. He said that the house should be told about any such force, which stopped the district administration from taking action against the land grabbers.

Speaking on a point of order, ANP parliamentary leader SardarHussain Babal( said that it was strange that a minister was showing his helplessness before the district administration and land grabbers.

He asked Speaker Asad Qaiser, who was chairing the session, to issue ruling to the government to retrieve the properties of the Auqaf department. However, the speaker didn`t issue any ruling rather he asked Senior Minister Inayatullah Khan to respond to his colleague statement and criticism of the lawmakers from the opposition benches.

The senior minister said that he would take up the issue with Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to direct the district administration to help in retrieving the land of Auqaf department.

The question was referred to standing committee of the house for deliberation and probe into the matter.

Provincial Finance Minister Muzaffar Said tabled The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Civil Servants Retirement Benefits and Death Compensation (Amendment) Bill, 2016.

The speaker adjourned the session till Monday.