Imagine the injustice of a situation in which lavish farmhouses and bungalows, standing on illegally occupied land, are provided electricity, water, link roads and other amenities, while villages in the same area have none. Yet this is what happened in March 2013 in Sindh, near Hyderabad, when nearly 1,500 acres of land allotted to a specific community were seized by two Sindh ministers and the brother of a minister. The way for them was facilitated by the provincial CM, with the land – worth billions – allocated at only Rs20 per acre. To make things even worse, the land snatched away was forest land that had been declared revenue land by the CM to make it possible to give it away. The influential persons who illegally obtained it apparently intended to build a housing project on it. After a brave stand by the Forest Department which resisted the move, and protests by civil society groups as well as affected villagers, the then chief justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took suo motu notice of the matter. On his orders, the land was re-seized and constructions on it demolished.

But it seems our rulers have no shame. According to a report in this newspaper, the land has now once again been taken over by the same persons. In all 140,827 acres of forest land in Sindh is under the illegal hold of the powerful, with encroachments and building works on these tracts worsening flooding damage. Pakistan also suffers from a desperate shortage of forest lands, mainly due to the actions of timber mafias and illegal allocations of a resource that belongs to us all. Only 4.8 percent of its land area is covered by forest, against an international recommendation of 25 percent, and between 1990 and 2010 the country lost 840,000 hectares of forest land according to the FAO. Thousands of acres continue to vanish each year. This has a grave environmental impact, as air quality worsens and there is greater vulnerability to natural disaster, including flash floods, floods and landslides. Helpless communities suffer too. But this does not stop the powerful from acting as they have in Sindh, disregarding the law and showing total indifference to the courts and to the plight of affected people. The multi-million dollar question is: will the courts now intervene again?


Wednesday, April 02, 2014
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