KARACHI: City Council discusses regularization scheme
KARACHI, Dec 30: The City Council on Thursday discussed the regularization scheme of the Karachi Building Control Authority, and expressed its concern over the cumbersome procedure adopted for getting illegal structures regularized.
The session of the council held with Presiding Officer Ghulam Abbas Baloch in the chair seemed divergent when a resolution was tabled by Sajjad Haider Dara for extension of the cut-off date for regularization from Dec 31 to end of March, 2005, and change in the procedure in this regard.
Mr Dara called for making the regularization procedure easy and simple, saying that the complicated process under the KBCA scheme was causing problems for the applicants, and had opened the doors of bribe for the KBCA staff.
He suggested that counters should be established in each UC and town of the city to facilitate masses in getting illegal structures regularized, as only one counter set up at Civic Centre had proved insufficient to cater to the needs of thousands of applicants.
However, when majority of the members seemed in a mood to pass the resolution regarding the cut-off date extension, Qazi Saddaruddin, a member of the council and coordinator of the city nazim disclosed that Mr Naimatullah Khan had already extended the date for regularization of illegal structures to March 31 on Thursday.
The presiding officer, after disclosure of Mr Qazi, ruled that now there was no need to pass this resolution, however, the matter pertaining to setting up counters in UCs and towns and making the procedure simple could be taken up in the next session of the council.
Razzaq Sangani proposed that the notices pertaining to illegal structures should be served through UCs for convenience of people. Earlier, Maharunnissa Baloch drew attention of the house towards establishment of factories in residential areas and on green zones in Bin Qasim Town, which was causing environmental hazards in the area.
"When the town nazim was informed about it, he said that the permission had been given by the city government, but in the CDGK no one was available for answer," she added.
Some council members from the Awam Dott Panel bitterly criticized the provincial government for handling the matter of Qambar Ali Khan, and held the government responsible for killing of four people, who were protesting against declaring of Shahdad Kot as district headquarter.
Najmi Alam said merely compensating the victims' families would not be enough, and demanded a thorough investigation into the tragedy to bring the elements involved to justice.
The council members took a common stand on non-payment of arrears of honorarium, and adopted a resolution to continue the session until the authorities took a final decision in this regard. -PPI
