Editor,
The last few months have witnessed a reignition of debate on the longstanding problem of ‘illegal occupation’ of government quarters. It is not hidden from anyone that the squatters in the government properties are not the poor and vulnerable people, rather the government servants, making it a classic case of ‘the fence eating the crops’.
We know that the inertia in the government is not due to incompetence, but rather a concerted effort to save their own illegal occupation and of their kinfolks.
Hardly any quarters have been left untouched, and with the lackadaisical effort of the government machinery, the remaining quarters are soon going to go extinct.
In the light of the impotency of the state power, the best course of action, and one that the government seems most likely to do, is to regularise the already encroached plots with punitive costs, ie, exacting twice the prevailing market rates of the plots encroached, on the basis of location and size of the plot. This way the government can create deterrence as well as generate revenue which can be used to create new quarters based on a highrise flat system, making it much more occupation proof than the compounded quarters system.
A concerned citizen