It is heartening to observe that Railways has swung into action to recover the encroached pieces of lands. The clean-up drive, coinciding with the launch of the Pakistan Business Express, apparently aims to give the impression that Railways is setting its house in order. But that is only partly true. There are currently three types of encroachments; commercial, domestic and governmental.
It is a shame that the housing settlements which largely include slum dwellers have been treated rather harshly and some of their settlements have been bulldozed at short notices. Such was their anger that some of the affectees even dragged their belongings on to the railway track and threatened to jump in front of a moving train. It is not the fault of these dwellers but the illegal housing agents and societies which tricked them into living in these areas. Besides they cannot easily have recourse to litigation which would include long court proceedings, and lawyers’ fee. The operation against commercial and governmental encroachments has now commenced. It constitutes a real challenge since powerful land mafia, government departments and an elite housing society in Rawalpindi is in occupation of its lands. Reportedly, the total encroached territory measures about 4,000 acres largely consisting of government departments, housing settlements and commercial areas. Over the years, markets, petrol pumps, shacks and depots have been set up. While there are no two opinions that action must be taken against these illegal constructions, Railways needs to be lenient in its approach. The middle ground would be to give the traders and commercial community at least three to four months’ notices to vacate the land and also give them the option to buy the lands on the going rate.
With the revenue that would be generated with the recovery of these encroachments, the railways must strive to provide better services to its customers. This includes renewing the ramshackle passenger trains, rebuilding of decrepit stations, signals, tracks and most importantly bringing in a corruption free computerised ticketing system. Also the induction of the GPS technology to minimise the incidence of accidents would make travel safer.