KARACHI, March 17: The chairman of the anomaly committee formed by the Sindh government for Karachi Buildings & Town Planning Regulations-2002, Aftab Mohammad Khan, asked the government to enact a town planning law without delay.
He also asked the government to establish a ministry of town and country planning, engineering and architecture after upgrading the urban affairs division so as to deal with all activities of town planning and development at the national, provincial, regional and district levels.
He was briefing newsmen about the working of the anomaly committee on Wednesday. Expressing his concern over inordinate delay in preparing the city's master plan, he said that unless the development plans were not prepared in line with a master plan, not only services like schools, hospitals and police stations would continue to be set up in residential areas and at public places but there would be haphazard growth in the city.
Describing differences between the Sindh and the city governments as 'unfortunate', he said "these have remained unresolved for months and in such circumstances disciplined organizations like the Karachi Building Control Authority is not in a position to function well."
Emphasizing the need for resolving such differences without further delay, he said that whenever such conditions prevailed in the United Kingdom, a high-level commission was normally set up to identify problems and their solutions.
He added that similar action should be taken by the provincial government to bring an end to differences which often cropped up between various government departments because of the absence of a proper administrative setup and lack of clear-cut responsibilities.
Speaking about the anomaly committee, he said that town planners had not been adequately represented in the eight-member committee because it consisted of merely one town planner as against four engineers and three architects.
He emphasized the need for identifying the needs of professional engineers, architects and town planners, besides providing them training for utilizing their services at different levels.
Answering a query, he said that the major anomaly in the Building and Town Planning Regulations was that the both the town planning and buildings laws had been put together although both were different fields and should have been dealt with separately.
He asked the government to introduce post-graduate courses in town planning, and added that the city government's town planning and environmental control department should be headed by a qualified town planner registered with the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners.
