Bahria Town management has sent another letter to Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah on behalf of Malik Riaz, requesting intervention in the dispute between Bahria Town and DHA.
In a letter, a heartfelt appeal from the affected investors, hockey players, employees, contractors, and millions of Pakistani families associated with Bahria Town has been mentioned.
This appeal is being made with great apprehension not to save Bahria Town as a business entity, but for the sake of the countless ordinary citizens whose homes, savings, businesses, livelihoods and future have been irreparably linked to its projects.
Behind every house and plot is a family, but behind an incomplete house is a lifetime of sacrifice, and with every stalled project, the hope of parents, families, overseas Pakistanis, salaried individuals, small traders and workers is tied that their investment will one day turn into a safe home or a dignified job.
For the past three years, according to Bahria Town’s statements and records, public investment and development activities worth nearly Rs. 372 billion have been severely hampered or practically stalled. Projects that were close to completion have been abandoned; promised infrastructure is incomplete; business activity is shrinking; contractors and suppliers are facing payment delays and severe financial pressure;
The future of employees is uncertain and the landlords go to their places to see silence instead of the roads, homes and communities that were supposed to be there. Each passing June of financial loss is adding to the anguish and fear that the people’s lifetime earnings may be wasted through no fault of their own.
According to the letter the matter is no longer a company dispute, but a humanitarian crisis. The public did not invest in litigation. They did not buy plots to have their savings sacrificed in the disputes of powerful institutions. They paid for homes, security and a secure future for their children.
But today, the burden of confiscation of movable and immovable properties, closure of accounts, encroachments on developed land and administrative stagnation is the common citizen’s experience, while fundamental legal disputes are pending before competent courts and relevant forums.
Now, the public is constantly under the impression that Bahria Town will be liquidated or completely liquidated. Such an outcome will not only harm a single company. It will destroy the value of public investment, making it impossible to complete Kamal projects.
It will destroy thousands of jobs and businesses and also limit the means of recovery of legitimate dues for the state. In the current circumstances, liquidation of Bahria Town practically wipes out the money of the ordinary Pakistani who has invested here. The final straw for the hostility against Bahria Town, however, lies at the door of the Pakistani citizen.
Bahria Town law recognizes that every legal obligation must be assessed and paid. And it is answerable to all competent forums, including the Supreme Court of Pakistan. But an undeniable economic reality is that dues can be paid only if viable projects, sons and income-generating activities are allowed to survive. If development works are stopped. Accounts and assets are frozen. Valuable properties are sold at less than their real value and public confidence continues to erode, the very source from which payments to the Supreme Court, government agencies, contractors and employees have been made will be extinguished. A tree cannot be cut down and demanded to bear fruit.
It is further stated that A state is strongest when its strength becomes a shield for the weak. Today not thousands but thousands of families are looking to the highest institutions of Pakistan not for any privilege but for protection from irreparable harm.
Their only request is that their homes should not be buried in institutional conflicts, their savings should not be sold at low prices, their children’s future should not be suspended indefinitely and the law should be allowed to speak before economic life ends.
We earnestly plead that Bahria Town be treated as a litigious entity apart from the wider public whose lives are linked to its projects. Saving these projects is saving a single company. Every institution’s legal claim can be protected without sacrificing innocent people. By judicious intervention, stalled projects can be revived, legal payments can be initiated, stale claims can be settled freely and crises of despair can be transformed into paths of justice and national stability.
Bahria Town still believes in Pakistan, its armed forces, constitution, courts and state institutions. He is willing to produce records, accept transparent audits or participate in settlements, accept legal judgments and follow the agreed payment plan. Its only request is that it is not terminated before it is heard and that the people of Pakistan are not punished for controversies in which they had no voice.
The immediate intervention is therefore respectfully requested to prevent any coercive, irreversible or illegal action against Bahria Town, its residents and the public, and to resolve all matters in accordance with due process of law, justice and mercy.
