Land, CBOs and the Karachi Circular Railway

28 November, 2008 By Arif Hasan Prepared for IIED, UK

Excerpt from the presentation:

The stakeholders in the railway land dispute are the Sindh government, the City (District) Government Karachi (CDGK), the Pakistan Railways, the Railway Employees Union (wanting accommodation on railway land), commercial formal sector ventures on railway land (wanting long term lease), and the low income settlements or katchi abadis (wanting regularisation)
Collectively, they have never sat down together to try and arrive at a consensus and this is one of the reasons why decisions have not yet been finalised
The devolution plan of 2001 has also given the city government considerable powers due to which an understanding with the Sindh government is not as easy to achieve as it was before devolution
Under devolution Karachi has been divided into 18 towns and the railway passes through eight of them. The nazims (mayors) of each town are also stakeholders who speak on the behalf of their constituencies
As such, devolution has increased the number of actors in the KCR land issue and new rules and procedures defining how they relate to each other have yet to be clearly defined