June 22, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 17, 1429

KARACHI, June 21: Thousands of allottees of over 80 huge housing complexes, including a number of ground-plus-seven-storey apartment buildings in the city, whose builders took no initiative to get their projects regularised during the two-year amnesty period granted by the Sindh government through an ordinance in 2002, are still deprived of the right to get their apartments subleased.

As the officials concerned failed to persuade the builders of such a huge number of illegal high-rise buildings to get their buildings regularised during the amnesty period, not only the low-income group allottees living in such buildings for over more than a decade are suffering as they are not being allowed to get their apartments subleased even on an individual basis, but both the Sindh and city governments have also suffered huge financial losses.

According to sources, the amount the KBCA would have generated from the builders of such a huge number of unlawfully constructed buildings on account of violations of building bylaws would have gone to the CDGK and the money which would have been realized from the builders under the head of difference of amount vis-à-vis the cost of those plots which had been frozen earlier by the Sindh government the land where the builders had raised buildings on the land belonging to the Railways and other government organisations, would have been given to the provincial government.

The Sindh government through an ordinance in 2002 had allowed the builders to get their irregular projects regularised after paying a certain penalty, but the facility was availed by only those builders whose projects were either sealed during the tenure of a former Sindh chief minister, Syed Abdullah Shah, or whose projects’ apartments and shops were not sold.

However, those builders who after receiving full payments had already handed over the possession of apartments and shops to the allottees in their high-rise apartment buildings did not bother to apply for the regularisation of their projects although such projects also fell under the category of unlawfully constructed buildings as these were either raised on government or Railways land or were constructed in violation of building bylaws.

However, the safe passage to the builders of illegal buildings for not applying for the regularisation of their projects was provided by no one else but senior-most officials of the KBCA who were assigned the task of framing rules for the regularisation of illegally constructed buildings as they had simply mentioned in the rules called the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations -- 2002 that the builders of illegal buildings who will not apply for the regularization of their projects during the amnesty period will be declared as ‘absconders’ so such builders gave preference to be declared as absconders than paying huge amounts for getting their projects regularised.

The irony of the fate was that although still these must be over 80 high-rise apartment buildings which have not yet been regularised, the KBCA has neither declared any builder of such projects as absconder nor withheld the approval of their new projects.

Sources in the KBCA said that if both the former chief controllers of the KBCA in whose tenure amnesty was given to the builders of illegal buildings by the government would have been interested in getting all the unlawfully constructed buildings regularized, they could have exerted pressure on the builders of such buildings simply by not approving building plans of their new projects and by withholding ‘No-objection certificates’ (NOCs).