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| February 04, 2007 | Sunday | Muharram 15, 1428 |
2,000 Muzaffarabad buildings to be razed
MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 3: The Muzaffarabad Municipal Corporation has initiated a project to demolish around 2,000 precarious private buildings in the quake-hit city.
“From today, we have kick-started the project, which, in fact lays, the basis of reconstruction in this town," said the corporation’s Administrator Arshad Mahmood Abbasi at a news conference here on Saturday.
The project has two components: demolition of dangerous buildings and removal of their debris at a cost of Rs 210 million and augmentation of the civic body’s capacity through purchase of equipment and recruitment of around 35 staff.
Mr Abbasi said teams would get a form signed from the owners of the buildings to begin demolition in their presence.
“Unless we demolish the dangerous buildings and level the land, the reconstruction process cannot be started,” he said.
“Even the 5,000 shelters pledged to survivors of the city by Saudi Arabia cannot be delivered unless the debris is removed,” he said.
According to official policy, only those vulnerable families are eligible to receive the shelters who have the ownership rights of at least three marlas of cleared land.
Answering a question, Mr Abbasi said target for completion of the project was one year but the corporation would try to accomplish the task within six months.
He said that in the first stage of the project the houses declared in ‘category A’ by Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority teams would be brought down.
Earlier, many families had paid private parties to flatten their dilapidated buildings and many had retrofitted their homes because of huge demolition costs and difficult process.
“Now they will get their buildings pulled down at state expense. Apart from that, the demolition teams will safely recover the whole building material and hand it over to the owners,” Mr Abbasi said.
He said the remaining debris would be recycled in a plant being brought here from Belgium.
The environment-friendly plant would be installed along the Neelum River and later used for solid waste management, he said. He said 11 people would be employed to operate the plant.
Mr Abbasi said in reply to a question that more than a 100 applications had been received from earthquake survivors who wanted their buildings knocked down on priority basis.
In response to a question, he said the corporation had to facilitate the Muzaffarabad Development Authority in execution of the land use plan for the state capital.
He said a water and sanitation project worth Rs80 million had been sent to Erra for approval, which included installation of three sewage treatment plants and recruitment of around 100 sanitary staff.
A state of the art slaughter house would also be built in Muzaffarabad under another project, he said.
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