Daily Times

The Pakistan Railways (PR) Lahore Division has recovered almost 8.5 kanal of its land in Okara after a successful operation against land grabbers on Wednesday.

The estimated market value of land was almost Rs 3.5 billion whereas the kettle yards and taxi stands were constructed by the encroachers on the land.

The encroachers were minting a huge amount from the land and after several complaints, the Divisional Superintendent of PR Lahore, Sufiyan Dogar with the collaboration of PR police resumed the operation against them and retrieved the said land.

According to sources, the PR owns almost 90,326 acres land in Punjab whereas almost 2,076 acres land in Punjab is still encroached which worth billion of rupees, however the land is under four types of encroachment: commercial, residential, agricultural and unauthorised occupation of government departments.

Sources further informed that hundreds acres of PR land is still encroached by private individuals and the department is helpless to take actions against them because the most of encroachers approach court and take stay orders whereas due to the slow processing of the cases in court delays entire process.

Sources were of the view that that without the involvement of the department’s officials, no land grabber could take hold of the state land however the encroachments on railways land has degraded the beauty of land and giving no revenue to the PR.

Sources expressed their grief over the situation by saying, “The concerned authorities never prioritize this issue, without any loss of time an anti-encroachment derive should start against the encroachers as Supreme Court of Pakistan already ordered to retrieve all railway lands in the whole country from the encroachers.”

DS Lahore Sufiyan Dogar while talking exclusively to Daily Times, said, “We have prepared a comprehensive policy to prevent further encroachments, cases of some lands are being heard at the courts and the land under un-authorised occupation has been retrieved. The lands are valuable assets of PR and its safety is my key responsibility, the department has a policy of zero tolerance against encroachments of all kind and is taking the transparent anti-encroachment measures.”

Published in Daily Times, August 9^th 2018.