May 16, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 10, 1429

HYDERABAD, May 15: The Sindh Town Planning Directorate, which is supposed to prepare development plans for cities and towns, has been rendered redundant as the government has, for many years, stopped seeking its advice and taking interest in its affairs.

Established 1915 under Bombay Town Planning Act, the directorate faces a host of issues and the government appears to have forgotten its very existence, officials in the directorate complain.

They said that the department had been created to develop cities under proper planning but unfortunately successive governments showed least interest in putting its expertise to use, leading to gradual ruin of the areas that developed haphazardly without basic infrastructure for civic amenities.

Since the governments did not strengthen the directorate over the years its counterparts started asserting themselves. Planning being a specialised subject requires expertise and the provincial governments are supposed to empower it.

After the creation of authorities like Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA), Karachi Development Authority (KDA), Malir Development Authority (MDA), Lyari Development Authority (LDA), Sehwan Development Authority (SDA) and Larkana Development Authority, the directorate has now the remaining areas of the province to take care of.

“But, it didn’t happen and on the contrary shanty towns started emerging rapidly with no development infrastructure or provision of civic facilities. We were supposed to prepare development plans and we did prepare around 17 but none of them was implemented, which shows the degree of government’s interest,” said a source in the department.

The directorate continues to be a victim of inattention by successive governments, military or civilian. Until last year since 2003 it was headed by a BPS-17 officer although the directorate was supposed to be headed by a BPS-19 official, which again showed the government’s interest.

On the contrary, said another official, its parallel departments like highways, public health engineering, health, buildings, forest and agriculture attracted serious attention at provincial level.

“These departments contribute through field formations in terms of development regardless of the fact the quality of work was good or bad,” remarked an official.

The state of the directorate offices, located on the second floor of Shahbaz Building is deplorable. The offices of DCO and other government agencies have been refurbished and repaired but the directorate did not get anything for repair.

The government has not made any promotions and the post of deputy director remains vacant to date with no fresh appointments made over the years.

The government belatedly realised the importance of town planning in the new millennium when it declared in act as Sindh Building Control Authority under Sindh Building Control Ordinance 1979.

Since a full-fledged “Authority” is yet to come into being, the directorate’s jurisdiction is restricted only to Sukkur, Nawabshah, Jacobabad, Thatta, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas.

Sources said that there was a proposal that the SBCA must have control over entire Sindh barring jurisdictions where development authorities like HDA, KDA, SDA, LDA, MDA, etc existed.

Though the directorate has powers to scrutinise public and private housing schemes and planning for six major cities but its devolution to taluka level under devolution plan introduced in 2001 has dealt it a further setback.

Under the devolution plan, a taluka officer (TO) of planning was supposed to be appointed in each taluka municipal administration (TMA) to take care of issues related to building control department and town planning but “interestingly none of the TMA in Sindh has a TO planning,” said an official.