The government has been planning to develop a modern city beside River Ravi in Lahore for a long time but it would be at the cost of affecting a lot of dwellers and industrialists in the area.
Due to this, hundreds of industrialists and workers in the Mehmood Booti Industrial Area have set up camps to protest against the government’s plans. Also participating in the protest is a huge number of the residents of the area who feel “threatened” by the project.
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The industrialists have been very vocal in their criticism of the current government’s strategy for the new city. While speaking to the participants of the protest, the chairman of the industrialists’ association, Inam-ul-Haq Butt said,
The government wants to kill us economically. The industries have been set up here by investing billions of rupees and now the government wants to snatch the land from us and wants to hand it over to the land mafia which is not acceptable.
Butt added that the industrialist community has earned the right to continue working on the land in question by paying billions of rupees in various taxes, and it would be unjust of the government to take their land and livelihoods away.
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He also remarked that if an industry is relocated, it will take at least three years for it to be reestablished and by then, all the workers will be jobless.
The Punjab Secretary-General Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F), Mian Mustafa Rashid, also attended the protest and said that this project will be “the death of the industry and the land dwellers”, and warned that the protestors will force the Punjab Assembly to surrender if the project is not seized.
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