KARACHI: Mayor Murtaza Wahab on Sunday said construction work around Karachi’s Hill Park had been halted, while the opposition Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) demanded that the PPP-led Sindh government investigate the matter.

Spread over 62 acres and located in PECHS, Hill Park was built in the early 1960s and is one of the largest parks in the city.

In a statement issued on Saturday night, a Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) spokesperson said that the construction work was halted a week ago following a public complaint.

Confirming this during his media talk on Sunday, Wahab clarified that the KMC had not “auctioned or allotted any land to anyone”.

He recalled that a week before Eidul Azha, he received a complaint, following which he sent a KMC team to the area. “I instructed them that if the construction is taking place within the KMC land, then proceed with demolition,” he said.

“Not even an inch of KMC land has been allotted,” the mayor reiterated, dismissing MQM-P’s claims of granting permission for construction work as political point-scoring.

Mayor Wahab stressed that Hill Park “had always been KMC’s property and will continue to remain as such”.

In the Saturday statement, the KMC spokesperson noted that legal action had been initiated as its Land Department “sent a letter to the police asking that the construction be stopped and action should be taken against those responsible”.

As per the statement, “an investigation into the public complaints revealed that the KMC made no allotment or that any construction permission was issued”.

The statement added that the mayor had issued instructions to relevant officers to take action, further stating that the Land Department had also sought “formal verification from PECHS to confirm the ownership of the land”.

It said that KMC had also sent a formal letter to the police to take “legal action against illegal occupation of the government land”.

In the letter, dated May 25 and available with Dawn, the KMC land director categorically rejected having granted “any permission, approval, no-objection certificate (NOC), allotment, lease, development right, possession right, or construction authorisation” over Hill Park’s land.

It added that certain individuals were using various “misinterpreted” documents and NOCs to justify the construction.

It contended that a Conditional NOC, dated April 30, had been “deliberately misinterpreted by certain parties”.

The land director stressed that any attempt to use that NOC to justify “occupying, encroaching upon, constructing on, or claiming right over government land or KMC property is entirely unlawful, misleading and contrary to the express contents of the document itself”.

“A careful reading of the said Conditional NOC clearly establishes that the subject plot was stated to pertain to PECHS Society and not to KMC,” the letter read, adding that the NOC stated it did not confirm ownership, title or possession or legal rights.

MQM-P raises questions on NOC granted

Earlier in the day, MQM-P’s Farooq Sattar and Waseem Akhtar held a press conference, where they called on the Sindh government to initiate an inquiry into the matter of alleged encroachment upon Hill Park.

In a jibe at the provincial government, the MQM-P leaders remarked that Karachi “has been left at the mercy of those who want to exploit its resources”.

“Hill Park is part of Karachi’s natural beauty. We should make it greener, plant more trees on it, which is KMC’s responsibility. However, what is happening here is the exact opposite of that,” Sattar said.

Sattar claimed that the activity was part of Karachi’s larger “land grabbing mafia”, which he alleged the Sindh government has “allowed” to operate.

The MQM-P leader also mentioned a “high court order which stipulated that the hills cannot be used for commercial or residential purposes”, adding that the construction was also in violation of the PECHS layout.

“The plot we are talking about is 39-G4. The plot next to it is 39-3G, and despite a boundary wall being built around it, no construction was able to take place because it was not in the master plan,” Sattar said.

Although he acknowledged that the mayor had halted the work, Sattar questioned how an NOC was issued for it “in the first place”, urging the Sindh government to launch an inquiry and suspend the officials responsible.

He recalled that during his mayorship from 1988 to 1992, “trees were being cut down to make space for houses of renowned people, but I put a stop to it”.

During his press talk, Sattar — whose MQM-P is an ally in the Centre’s coalition — called on the federal government and the “establishment” to “intervene, or PPP will sell the rest of Karachi’s land as well”.