PTI leader Ejaz Chaudhary strongly condemned Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Islamabad polices' insensitive action that razed slum in sector I-11. He questioned where these homeless slum dwellers would go as the forced evictions by the CDA is not the solution to the problem he added. He said the demolition of homes is unpleasant for the dwellers when the monsoon rains are hitting hard Islamabad. These poor people are encroaching not because they want to live in squalor under constant threat of the uncertainty of being thrown out of their homes as they are living there because they have nowhere else to go he added. He said on humanitarian grounds these poor slum dwellers should not be removed from their homes without being given an alternative place to live.
PTI leader Yasmin Rashid said Sharif Brothers want to control everything by using police force. The callous police personnel pushed the poor slum dwellers inside the settlement by firing tear gas shells and using water guns she added. She said these slum dwellers would peacefully have left their homes if they were offered some other place to live. Uprooting thousands of poor people without offering them a place to live is a violation of basic human right she added.
PTI Information Secretary Andleeb Abbas said the CDA officials should have been taken to task for allowing these slum dwellers to settle there 30 years ago in the first place. She said the only crime of these poor slum dwellers is that they are poor and cannot afford a roof over our heads. We have never seen CDA take action against the affluent who encroach upon public land, violate regulations openly and ignore laws she added. Why is it always that the poor defenseless and downtrodden have to suffer at the hands of the authorities she questioned? She said CDA must come up with a rehabilitation plan and then ask to move these people.
Media Cell
PTI Punjab