ISLAMABAD: The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) recovered 3,598 acres of land worth Rs. 25 billion from encroachers by the mid of March, out of its properties worth around Rs. 100 billion being illegally occupied across the country.
The retrieval of these properties has been made possible under the supervision of the one-man commission on minorities’ rights and protection, Dr. Shoaib Suddle, constituted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2019.
As per the details, the ETPB, with the help of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), has retrieved its occupied land in various districts of Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,
The commission was given the task by the apex court to ensure that the dues of the ETPB are covered by the tenants of properties, and the illegally occupied land was retrieved.
The first quarterly report compiled by the Commission has highlighted that out of around Rs. 2.94 billion recoverable dues (rental etc. of properties), Rs. 694 has been recovered up to March.
Moreover, the ETPB has taken control of 3,598 acres of land out of the total occupied 15,008 acres of land across the country, whereas 11,410 acres of land are yet to be retrieved.
Most of the occupied properties of the ETPB were in districts of Karachi, Hyderabad, and Sukkur of Sindh and Quetta of Balochistan, where only 1,436 acres of properties/land worth Rs. 3 billion have been retrieved so far out of 9,953 acres of land.
Similarly, the ETPB has retrieved a considerable number of its land grabbed by encroachers/occupiers in Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, Gujrat, Gujranwala, and Sialkot districts.
The Supreme Court had earlier directed the FIA to take action on the report of the Auditor General of Pakistan regarding alleged irregularities in property units of the ETPB.
The court was earlier informed that the trust owned a total of 48,000 properties, out of which only three properties were sold.
