Locals vow not to give away their land for Ravi Riverfront City project

The much-hyped Ravi Riverfront City project inaugurated by Prime Minister Imran Khan with great fanfare is facing serious problems from the very beginning over land acquisition and other related issues, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.

Promising to resist the move, the locals have rejected venture, describing it as a plan to displace and make the population homeless.

In connection, the people living in the area staged a protest and vowed not to give away their homes for the project. But it was not just the youth as the charged elderly people too attended the protest which is part of a movement picking up the pace against the plan.

Precious land was being acquired at a nominal rate, they said, as a large of citizens from Saggian, Mehmood Booti, Karol and other adjacent localities were among the protesters.

They said paying Rs7 million for one acre of fertile agriculture land with an actual price of millions more was a great injustice.

On the other hand, hundreds of industrialists from the Mehmood Booti area too took to the streets and said hundreds of units – small, medium and large – were on the verge of destruction. 

They demanded that the industries should be excluded from the area reserved for the project by declaring these as part of an industrial zone.

On the other hand, the PML-F has decided to support the affected population. Mian Mustafa Rashid – who is a brother of PTI leader Mian Mehmood-ur-Rashid – described the Ravi River City project as another name of East India Company.