KARACHI: The Sindh cabinet on Tuesday approved a digital property registration system for overseas Pakistanis while also clearing major decisions on forest conservation, agricultural trade infrastructure and traffic case adjudication, officials said.
The meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, endorsed a plan to enable non-resident Pakistanis to process land and property matters through an electronic system. As part of this arrangement, 49 sub-registrar offices across the province have been integrated with NADRA to allow identity verification and record authentication through a centralised database.
Officials told the cabinet that the move is expected to simplify procedures that previously required multiple physical visits, long paperwork trails and manual verification. By connecting land registration offices with NADRA’s system, authorities aim to reduce delays, prevent record tampering and improve confidence for overseas citizens dealing with property matters from abroad.
The cabinet also approved the construction of a fruit and vegetable wholesale market in Larkana with an estimated cost of Rs4.3 billion. The project is intended to create a central trading facility for growers and merchants in upper Sindh, improve storage and handling of produce, and strengthen supply routes between farms and urban markets.
A significant portion of the session focused on environmental protection in the coastal belt. The Sindh Wildlife and Forest Department briefed the cabinet on the ecological importance of the Indus Delta and recommended legal protection for a vast tract of mangrove land in Sujawal district.
Acting on the recommendation, the cabinet declared 405,002 acres of coastal land in Sujawal as protected forest. With this addition, the total area under protected forest status in the province now stands at 566,298 hectares, including large swathes in Thatta and Sujawal.
The chief minister observed that forest cover in Sindh remains far below desired levels, noting that only about 10 per cent of the province is under forest.
He said the government aims to raise this figure to 25 per cent over time in line with international environmental benchmarks, adding that mangrove forests serve as a natural defence against coastal erosion, tidal surges and cyclones while supporting marine life and local livelihoods.
In another decision, the cabinet authorised consumer courts across the province to also function as traffic courts. The change is designed to speed up disposal of cases related to electronic traffic challans issued through surveillance and monitoring systems in cities. These courts will now have the authority to hear and decide such cases directly.
Officials said the combination of digital governance, environmental conservation and infrastructure expansion reflects an effort to modernise public services while addressing long-standing ecological and economic challenges.
Implementation of the digital property registration system, development of the Larkana market and enforcement of the new protected forest status will be carried out by relevant departments in the coming weeks.
