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Life in DHA disrupted

By Hina Farooq

LAHORE: Life came to a standstill in the AA, BB, GG, X and Y-Blocks of the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) because of police barricades.

Many blocks were partially barricaded, while some were completely shutdown because of the presence of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto in the society. The barricades aimed at stopping Benazir from taking out the long march scheduled for Tuesday. Benazir was also put under house arrest in the house of PPP Senator Latif Khosa in the DHA’s X-Block, where she is temporarily staying. The X-Block was completely barricaded and movement was restricted in the block.

Schoolchildren were affected the most because school buses were not allowed in some areas and were seen dropping off children as far as half a kilometre from their homes.

Zara Haider, whose 10-year-old son studies at the Defence Public School, said her son returned home after 3pm on Tuesday though he usually came home at 1:30pm. She said that when she called other parents, they had similar complaints.

A resident of X-Block and a cop fought on Monday when the policeman did not allow the resident to get on Ghazi Road even when he told the cop that he was taking his ill mother to hospital. The argument became heated and the man took off his slipper and started smacking the cop with it.

Zain Ali, who lives behind MacDonald’s in Y-Block, said he had trouble getting to college in the morning. “I study at the Lahore School of Economics, which is in Burki. It normally takes me 15 minutes to get to college. I was late for my first class because of police barricades on Tuesday. These cops are imbeciles. I understand that the political situation is precarious, but troubling us DHA residents like this is beyond my comprehension.

“We are fed up with this scenario. It has never been this bad in DHA. We want to return to normal life,” he added.

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