LAHORE: Residents of the Pak Arab Housing Society on Ferozepur Road say they will protest and even move court to stop the administration from converting areas reserved for a school and a hospital into residential or commercial plots. The original map for the society, which is controlled by the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), envisaged a school and hospital on a 9.5-kanal plot in Block B. However, the administration is now planning to move the proposed buildings to Block E without consulting the residents.Muhammad Kashif, a resident of B Block, said that the society had started dividing the 9.5-kanal space into 5-marla plots. “I built my house here thinking that it would be convenient to send my children to this school nearby,” he said. “Now my planning turns out to be useless because they are shifting the school.”
Kashif said that he and other residents of B Block had written to the society administration and the LDA but received no response. He said that the administration had told the residents that the LDA had approved their revised map. He said that the residents would protest and move the courts to obtain a stay order against the action. He also complained that the scheme of more than 3,000 plots had only one mosque that could accommodate about 100 people. Moinuddin, the executive director of the society, said the LDA had yet to approve their plan to revise the map and denied that new plots had been marked out. “We submitted the proposal to the LDA last year and are still waiting for approval,” he said.
He said that the society had started building a school on 4.5 kanals in E Block and had reserved areas for a park and a hospital next to it. He said that the shift was necessary because the road in B Block was already choked most of the time due to commercial activities. “If we build the school and hospital there then that road will always be blocked,” he said. Asked about the matter, officials at the LDA metropolitan planning wing said that Khalid Lodhi, the director who had been looking at the case, had been suspended from service a couple of days ago and they could not comment on the situation.
