Minister for Law and Cooperatives Raja Basharat has said in a statement issued on Sunday that the state land owned by the Cooperatives Department in Punja worth billions of rupees had been retrieved from the land grabbing mafia and recovery of government arrears was underway. He said that the relinquished land was owned by Punjab Cooperatives Liquidation Board which had more than four and a half thousand kanals of commercial, residential and agricultural lands in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Sargodha, Kasur, Attock, Murree and other cities. Raja Basharat said that the mafia had been kept that land in its illegal control for years. He said that 764 kanals of land at Thokar Niaz Baig, Jalalpura and other places of Lahore alone had been relinquished during the last six months as he assumed the charge of the ministry. The provincial minister further said that he had also directed Punjab Cooperatives Bank Limited authorities to take effective steps to get evacuate its land from grabbing mafia as soon as possible. He said that the Cooperatives department was being made more farmer friendly and was being gradually separated the housing sector. Raja Basharat said that the election schedule had been issued to revive the long inactive cooperative societies while regular appointment was being made soon to fill the long vacant post of the President Cooperative Bank. "Furthermore, cooperatives stores and service centers are being rehabilitated and issuance of easy loans to farmers for purchase of agricultural implements through Cooperative Bank will be resumed soon," he concluded.
