September 17, 2006	Sunday	Sha'aban 23, 1427

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LAHORE, Sept 16: Taking a cue from the LDA-traders ‘compromise’ on Shahalam market’s dangerous buildings’ issue, owners of some Gulberg plazas unsealed their buildings a couple of days after they were sealed by the LDA.

The illegality had been committed on Friday evening but LDA director-general Raja Muhammad Abbas was ‘unaware’ of the move even by Saturday evening.

This state of affairs of the officials’ commitment shows the prospects of the campaign the LDA is pledging to wage in the whole city for checking violation of building bylaws.

After an ‘abortive’ operation in Shahalam market on Sept 4, the LDA on Tuesday last had sealed three plazas on Gulberg’s main boulevard.

One of them, Mega City, had two floors over and above the approved building plan while some other constructions were also not conforming to the building bylaws.

Jeff Heights, close to the Hafeez Centre, had also been sealed as the developer had constructed two extra floors without getting approval for the same while shops had been set up in its basement earmarked for parking in the building plan.

The third plaza sealed in Gulberg was Hasan Tower, which had four illegal floors.

On Wednesday, the LDA team led by town planning deputy director Faheem Ahmad sealed two more commercial buildings on the main boulevard. One was an under-construction plaza on plot No 82-D-I and the other 11 shops of Siddique Trade Centre established on the site earmarked for parking in the building plan.

The LDA officials say the owners of many high-rises have secured stay orders from various courts so they were unable to demolish any illegal structures/ portions. However, the court orders do not restrain them from sealing the same and their use for any gainful activity and, thus, this sealing campaign.

Raja Abbas said he had asked town planning director Qazi Masood Ahmad “to check if the LDA seals were intact.”

If found unsealed, the authority would challan the owners as well as re-seal the buildings, he said.

He did not believe that the act of unsealing would hit the LDA’s recently-launched campaign for strictly enforcing building bylaws and would encourage further bylaw violations as well as challenging writ of the administration.

“The purpose of the campaign is to cause a fear among the violators that action may be initiated against them any time.”

Earlier, the Shahalami traders, led by CM’s advisers Haji Hanif Tayyab and Haji Maqsood Butt, had unsealed six plazas hours after they had been sealed by the district authorities in the busiest commercial centre of the city on Sept 4.

The plazas, built illegally ignoring all stipulations of the building code, had been declared dangerous during a survey held in the wake of collapse of a multi-storey arcade a couple of weeks ago in the area in which two people had been killed and several others injured, besides loss of property running into millions of rupees.

The Shahalam market traders and the CDGL later reached a ‘settlement’ as the former agreed to dismantle the commercial buildings after an examination by experts while the city authorities promised not to initiate any legal proceedings against them for unsealing the buildings.