KARACHI: NED assigned resurvey of protected buildings
By Bhagwandas
KARACHI, Dec 2: The Sindh government on Friday assigned the task of re-survey of over 600 protected, dilapidated buildings to the NED University of Engineering and Technology.
The task was assigned in a meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary, Fazalur Rehman, which adopted recommendations by Arif Hasan Khan. The meeting was also attended by Sindh Secretary Culture Mehtab Akbar Rashidi, Secretary Works and Services Syed Faisal Saud, Secretary General Administration and Coordination Abdul Qadir Mangi, KBCA Acting Chief Controller Building Rauf Akhtar, Prof Aneela Waseem of the NED University and others.
In addition to recommendations of Arif Khan, member technical committee on old buildings, the meeting was presented with a survey report of the Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) on 91 buildings, completely or partially dilapidated due to various reasons including mismanagement.
The Sindh government had on last Tuesday decided to resurvey over 600 buildings in the city protected under the Sindh Cultural Heritage Protection Act, it was learnt.
According to sources, the decision to carry out the resurvey of the protected buildings was taken at a special meeting of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Heritage, headed by the Chief Secretary Fazalur Rehman.
Sources said that the Sindh Culture Department had convened the said special meeting to discuss a list of buildings protected under the Cultural Heritage Protection Act, declared dangerous in a survey carried out by the KBCA after the recent earthquake.
The sources said that the KBCA had earlier submitted a list of approximately 100 dangerous buildings, but later the list was reviewed and only 50 buildings, protected under the Cultural Protection Act, remained on the list of dangerous buildings.
They said the meeting decided to broaden the scope of the resurvey, and rather than sticking to the agenda of a special meeting about discussing only the buildings mentioned in the dangerous buildings’ list decided to carry out the resurvey of all protected buildings in the city, totalling over 600.
The sources said that the task of resurvey would be given to the NED University, adding that the department would soon approach the said varsity in this regard.
The sources added that the number of protected buildings could go up or down after the resurvey, as many of the buildings on the protected list had been demolished.
They said the survey could also nominate other buildings that might have escaped the government’s attention while the exercise to select and subsequently protect architecturally and culturally important buildings had been carried out earlier.
The sources said that the criteria on which the buildings could be added to or removed from the protected list would soon be formulated by the government.
Thereafter, the resurvey would start and a report would be submitted to the culture department within three to four months.
The final decision on the resurvey report would be taken by the Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs.
The survey report would contain reasons why a certain building should remain on the protected list or why it should not, and why other buildings should be added to the list.
The sources said the Sindh Culture Department had protected over 600 buildings in 1990s, an overwhelming majority of which were owned by private people, and the Act puts stringent restrictions on carrying out any kind of repairs, constructions, etc, which may damage the beauty of the protected buildings representing the city’s cultural heritage.
Since almost all of the protected buildings were constructed half a century back when the city was a small town of around half a million people, all of these buildings now fall in the centre of the city, which has expanded tremendously in the past 50 years and where real estate values have skyrocketed over the years.
The sources said that an overwhelming majority of the building owners want to demolish their buildings, protected under the act, so that new high-rise buildings could be built in their place.
The plots where these buildings are located are worth billions of rupees now.
But as the Act puts severe restrictions on carrying out any construction work in a protected building, the monetary value of such buildings has been affected severely, and a vast majority of the owners are trying hard to get their protected buildings removed from the list.
Conservationists, pointing to Tuesday’s special meeting convened to discuss the fate of just a few dangerous buildings (between 50 and 100), feared that if complete transparency was not maintained, owners of protected buildings could manipulate or influence the resurvey exercise to get their desired results.
A few influential building owners have though managed to demolish their buildings and construct new ones in their place while some others had managed to get their buildings remove from the list in the past, the conservationists added.
