Residents of Pakistan Quarters talking to the media | Faysal Mujeeb, White Star
The Estate Office subsequently issued multiple notices to each ineligible occupant. It has also warned them through newspaper advertisements that they could be forcibly evicted if they fail to comply with the court orders to leave.
When these notices and warnings did not work, the Estate Office launched an eviction drive in Pakistan Quarters — first in July and then in October this year. Officials, accompanied by large contingents of law enforcement agencies, told the illegal occupants to leave their residences. They met stiff resistance on both occasions.
Obaid Uddin, who heads the Estate Office in Islamabad, is adamant that the drive will continue. All the illegal occupants of Pakistan Quarters will be ousted by the end of December 2018, he says. Though he does not give a final date of eviction for those living in other facilities, he insists that they, too, will have to vacate their residences soon.
The first eviction notices were issued in 1972.
Some retired employees who received those notices approached Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who, at the time, was the president of Pakistan. They asked him to give them ownership rights of the quarters. On May 2, 1972, Bhutto approved a proposal for the construction of “decent multi-storied buildings” for serving and retired employees on the same premises where the government quarters stand.
The plan never materialised. No one was evicted though.
Seven years later, the retired residents received another round of eviction notices. Now they approached the Sindh High Court, seeking withdrawal of the notices. The court ruled that the matter did not warrant its interference. The retirees filed an appeal before the Supreme Court which ordered the federal housing ministry on February 15, 1984 to present their plea to the government for considering it “on merit”.
After receiving the court order, the housing ministry sought the opinion of the law ministry on how to proceed. On July 29 the same year, the law ministry stated that the Supreme Court, or any other authority in the country, had not set aside the president’s order issued in 1972. The Estate Office in Karachi, therefore, was bound to follow up on that order.
The housing ministry suspended the eviction notices and set up a board with the mandate to prepare a feasibility report for the construction of multi-storied residential buildings, as per Bhutto’s orders. The report, submitted to the ministry in April 1988, proposed the construction of 7,904 housing units — including 906 for retired government servants. The construction, to be completed in four years, was estimated to cost 1.08 billion rupees.
This proposal, too, was never implemented. The housing ministry did not have money to spend on it.
By that time, some squatters had built temporary dwellings, or katchi abadis, on open spaces such as parks and playgrounds within the same neighbourhoods where the quarters are located. In the 1980s, the federal government handed over the control of 36 acres of land on which these katchi abadis stood to the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority. In an ironic development, the squatter dwellings were later legalised as rightfully belonging to their occupants.
Serving and retired government employees, on the other hand, still did not get ownership of their quarters.
On September 15, 1989, the federal cabinet once again decided that they be given ownership rights. On April 5, 1991, the National Assembly’s deputy speaker, federal housing minister and a couple of senators made the same announcement in a joint press conference. In 2007-08, the ministry of housing sent certificates to those who were deemed eligible to become the owners of their quarters.
Shah was ecstatic as he received the certificate. “When the Estate Office issued me the certificate of eligibility in 2007, I became confident that no one could now deprive me of my residence,” he says.