This is the story of how Karachi’s 52 acres of an amenity plot that were reserved for a park and were part of the city’s famous Safari Park in District East fell prey to massively illegal commercial activities over the years.
Latest Pakistan News obtained copies of at least five agreements that allowed commercial activities on the premises of the park over the course of five years and found out under whose watch those agreements were signed.
The park is currently known as Aladin Amusement Park, which had been housing Aladin Shopping Mall and Pavilion End Club. On June 14, 2021, the Supreme Court declared both of them illegal and ordered their demolition within two days. Then the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) sprang into action and complied.
The Sindh Disposal of Urban Land Ordinance states that no amenity plot is to be converted or used for any other purpose other than what it is intended for. Amenity plots are reserved for parks, gardens, playgrounds, graveyards, hospitals, schools, colleges, libraries, community centers, mosques, or other such purposes.
It began in 1995
The saga of Aladin Park started in 1995 when then Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief minister Syed Abdullah Shah and chief secretary formed a committee to convert 52 acres of Safari Park into an amusement park. Hameed Haroon chaired the committee, and then KMC administrator Fahim Zaman was one of its members.
On May 30 Zaman signed an agreement with Zodiac Joyland, which was granted the 52 acres facing Rashid Minhas Road for 25 years to develop an amusement park on the pattern of Disneyland. The lease was granted on the condition that the land would be used for amenity purposes.
The developer was bound by the agreement to submit a detailed master plan and a detailed design of the proposed amusement park to the KMC within six months.
The agreement stated that 66 percent of the area would remain open space, while the remaining 34 percent could be covered by building structures and machines, within which not more than five percent could be used for commercial purposes like gift shops and snack bars.
The fifth clause of the agreement clearly restricts the developer from subleasing or assigning the project land or any part of it to anyone else.
A fresh agreement
Zaman was the administrator until April 4, 1996. On April 9, when PPP was still in power and Aznar Hussain Zaidi was the new KMC administrator, a fresh agreement was signed between the KMC and AA Joyland.
Serious anomalies seem to have appeared in this agreement: not only was subleasing allowed but approval was also granted for food and merchandise outlets, exhibition center, and mini-cinema for 24 and a half years.
The name of the company was also changed from Zodiac Joyland to AA Joyland due to some internal affairs of the company, but Ibrahim Shamsi was still their managing director.
On April 22 a lease deed was signed between the KMC and AA Joyland. The document mentions merchandising outlets, which are explained as the merchandising, franchising, and food outlets to be subleased by AA Joyland in the commercial area.
The deed’s Clause 7.4 states that AA Joyland has the right to sublease merchandising outlets to any type of retailer, restaurant, or another purveyor of goods or services.
This is apparently where the illegality started. Advocate Zubair Ahmed says the KMC does not have the authority to allow the establishment of clubs and shopping malls on amenity plots, so there can never be any sublease in this regard.
The addenda lease
On March 21, 1998, the KMC and AA Joyland signed an addenda lease, according to which the agreement dated May 30, 1995 stands detached from the lease deed.
At that time the then Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) Farooq Sattar was the local government minister of the province and Waseem Akhtar was the town planning minister.
Sattar told The News that no shops were there in his era. “I tried to reduce all the commercial activities in the park,” he said, adding that the agreement signed in 1996 was flawed and it allowed subleasing shops.
According to the addenda lease signed in 1998, 25 percent of all the revenue received by the company through the execution of subleasing would be deposited to the KMC, while 10 percent of all revenue deposits from subleasing would be paid to the KMC.
Clause 9.2 of the addenda lease states that the company agreed that no meal or festival would be held at the amusement park, except festivals at the water park, the Basant festival, and the Eid festival during Ramazan.
Talking to a private news channel on June 15, 2021, Zaman shared how he tried to get control of the shopping mall inside Aladin Park in 1999 when Sindh was under governor’s rule during the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government and he was once again made the KMC administrator, but he could not continue the operation because “the law enforcement agencies were uncooperative”.
Owing to a disruption in vaccine supply from the Centre, several vaccination centres across Sindh, including Hyderabad, had to temporarily close due to a shortage of vaccines.According to the Sindh Health Department, forty per cent of the vaccination centres in Hyderabad and parts of lower Sindh had to be temporarily shut down as they ran out of vaccine stock.تازہ ترین خبریں Meanwhile, the remaining vaccination centres are only facilitating those who visit to get the second dose of the vaccine.Per the Sindh Health Department, the shortage of vaccines is being faced because the federal government has not sent the supply to the province, adding that the new stock is expected to arrive by June 20.In Hyderabad, 21 vaccination centres have run out of vaccine stocks, the district health officer said.Logistics, coordination challenges disrupt vaccine supply in Pakistan Pakistan on Tuesday faced a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines due to the lack of coordination among government bodies, coupled with a disruption in supply from China.Officials in the federal government said that the task of procuring the vaccines had been assigned to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) while the National Health Ministry was relieved of this duty.
As a result, a lack of coordination was witnessed while there was a disruption in vaccine supplies from China which led to the crisis.The NDMA, officials said, was not only dealing with Chinese vaccine manufacturers, including Sinopharm, Sinovac, and CansinoBIO, but it was also negotiating with Pfizer for the procurement of its mRNA vaccine for the country, a deal which could not be struck yet.Similarly, they said, Pakistan was relying heavily on the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, for the preparation and filing of single-dose Chinese vaccine Cansino from the bulk concentrate, which is being distributed in the name of PakVac, but the NIH also failed to fulfil its commitment of sustained supply of the single-dose vaccine.“NIH Islamabad had assured that they would be providing three million doses of PakVac (Cansino) vaccine per month but it failed to meet its commitment”, one of the officials said.In the beginning, the Pakistan government inoculated people with the double-dose Sinopharm vaccine from China, followed by AstraZeneca from the UK before opting for SinoVac and single-shot Cansino from China.
The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), which had received 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, has supplied 26,000 doses to Punjab, which will be administered to immunocompromised people, such as patients of organ transplant, cancer, and AIDS on a priority basis.When contacted, a spokesman of the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations & Coordination said that the shortage of vaccine has spread thinly across the country.
Therefore, he suggested that the relocation of vaccines from limited use CVCs was required.He further said that only limited quantities of vaccines were reserved centrally.
“The next consignments of vaccines are expected towards the end of the current week,” he told The News.
Pakistan Latest News: एशिया इंटेरन्ट कोएलिशन AIC ने इस महीने प्रधानमन्त्री इमरान खान को एक पत्र लिखा था जिसमे उन्होंने इमरान खान से इस क़ानून को बदलने की मांग की थी,इन कंपनियों ने कहा इस से इनको काम करने में बहुत दिक्कत आ रही है और ऐसा ही रहा तो ये सेवाएं देने में असमर्थ हो जाएंगी ऐसा न्यूज़ इंटरनेशनल ने शुक्रवार को बताया।Read more: Latest news updates
EDM is more than just electronic music.
EDM is attraction, its catchy, it will make you leave you chair and jump with song.
Electronic dance music (also known as EDM, dance music, club music, or simply dance) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres produced largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals.
Produced for playback by disc jockeys (DJs), EDM is generally used in the context of a live mix, where a DJ creates a seamless selection of tracks by segueing from one recording to the next.
Like other music genres, EDM has various subgenres that evolved over the past 30 years that are often defined by their varying tempo (BPM), rhythm, instrumentation, and time period.
I bet we continue to see EDM's four-on-the-floor roots stay in position (as they've been here since disco) but adopt more and more of the organic side of synthesis and sampling.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ordered the abolishment of the Nasla Tower in Karachi, a building constructed on government-owned during, a hearing on Wednesday.تازہ ترین خبریںThe court also directed authorities to clear all government-owned lands in Karachi of encroachments and submit a report within three months.During the proceedings, a senior member of the Board of Revenue told the court that a survey of government-owned land is underway, which will be completed within six months.Expressing anger over the slow pace of work, the Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed said that Karachi and Sindh have been "destroyed.
"He said that the court needs an accurate record from the survey, adding that the incumbent authorities have made a mess of the situation while the revenue department "seems to be busy minting money".The Chief Justice remarked that Karachi "does not even have a master plan", noting that areas like Malir and Korangi have many illegally constructed high-rise buildings.He said that if the land records are not computerised with immediate effect, action will be taken against those responsible at the Board of Revenue.In response, a senior member of the Board of Revenue said that the board has so far complied with all orders of the court.In response, the Chief Justice said the court will see which orders have been implemented.
"If not, you will be the first one to lose your position," the top judge warned the representative.FIRs to be registered against leaseholders in Karachi: Chief JusticeAnother case, related to encroachments along Karachi's Gujjar nullah, was also heard in the Supreme Court.In his remarks, the Chief Justice said that first information reports (FIRs) would be registered by police against those involved in leasing lands in Karachi and this will be the first step in holding the responsible to account.The Administrator of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) Laeeq Ahmed also appeared before the court and said that an operation has been launched against encroachments on the nullah, adding that there is difficulty in demolishing buildings and there is a shortage of funds as considerable sums have been spent on demolishment.Irked by the response, the Chief Justice said KMC has been rendered useless, adding that 80% of the staffers ought to be fired as they do not seem to do any work and just sit in the office the entire day.
