The Land Mafia
- Raziq Hussain, Wah Cantt

THE recent steep hike in the prices of real estate in Pakistan is due to the wealthy and strong land mafia, wile buying a small piece of land and building a house has become a distant dream for most.

The people dealing with real estate have ventured into the field after exploiting others to the maximum. For instance, taking loans from banks and getting them written off or running away without paying, manoeuvring customs rules for short periods and reverting them back for import of vehicles and sugar.

Since these avenues are no longer available, the housing sector for the poor is being used for grabbing wealth.

Land is being taken at a minimum rate and sold to the wealthy at hefty prices, when an ordinary person cannot even think of buying a small plot or a house.

People are using the names of military-like housing schemes that are meant to be owned by the navy and army, but this is not so. Application forms are also being black-marketed due to the huge publicity and the little time given for submission of applications for plots by these housing schemes.

This is another technique of extracting money from those aspiring to invest in the schemes. Another aspect of such housing developments is that they are destroying a large chunk of fertile agricultural land located around the big cities.

Margalla hills in this area are also at a severe risk due to the proposals given to the government by mafia heads for housing development across the hills. When the world is moving towards construction of high-rise buildings to save land, we are eating into our fertile agricultural landscape with these housing schemes.

The land business, selling and buying of plots and houses, their transfer from one name to the other, and development of any housing project or scheme must be immediately stopped and banned for a minimum period of 10 years.

The revenue department should be instructed to register no such deals during this period and people trying to make such deals must be brought to book. This is the only way to curb the activities of the land mafia.●

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