KARACHI: Amenity plot conversion City planners question DHA policy on fuel stations
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Dec 5: The Defence Housing Authority and the city planners are on a collision course over the construction of petrol stations on amenity plots.
The petrol and CNG station on Khayaban-i-Bahria which experienced explosions on Dec 3 was built on an amenity plot.
The building control laws of the defunct Karachi Development Authority and the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation do not allow conversion of amenity plots into commercial plots.
While most city planners insist that amenity plots should house facilities like education, health, recreation (not entertainment) and community buildings, the DHA has come up with a new interpretation of the term “amenity”.
Speaking to Dawn, DHA administrator Brig Maqsood Hussain said that since amenity plots should offer facilities to the residents of a locality, the DHA was quite within its rights to set up petrol stations on them.
He said: “The word amenity means facilities and services. A petrol pump in a locality is a great facility to those residents who own cars. There is nothing in the rulebook to say you cannot have a petrol station on an amenity plot.”
He added that a petrol pump was constructed only when relevant civic bodies gave no-objection certificates. He observed that a petrol station in a residential area did not violate the privacy of those who lived in neighbouring localities. He said that if he closed petrol and CNG stations in Defence, the residents would have great trouble obtaining petrol and compressed natural gas for their vehicles.
A leading architect, Arif Hasan, who has authored several books on Karachi, said all over the world amenity plots did not house commercial facilities. “In all those areas which were previously governed by the Karachi Development Authority and the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, an amenity plot cannot house a commercial facility, like a petrol pump,” he explained.
He said that there was nothing wrong in having a petrol station in a residential locality. “But every residential area has a certain number of amenity plots which cannot be converted into commercial plots. But all safety measures about the CNG stations should be strictly enforced by relevant civic authorities,” he said.
When contacted, the president of the Defence Residents Society, Zafar Iqbal, recalled that people living near Khayaban-i-Bahria had protested against the construction of a petrol station in their locality. “The petrol pump where some explosions occurred on Dec 3 was constructed on an amenity plot.”
