September 26, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 25: Most government buildings in the city are being constructed without the mandatory approval of their building plans from the Karachi Building Control Authority.

According to sources, while private builders have to obtain the mandatory approval for their building plans from the KBCA, which takes punitive actions including demolition in the case of deviation from the approved plan, the authority looks the other way when it comes to checking the construction of government buildings.

The sources said that the rules required that the KBCA’s approval for the plans of government buildings be obtained.

Interestingly, some time back the chief secretary, realising that the government departments were not obtaining the mandatory approval from the KBCA in gross violation of the law, issued a directive to all the departments to get the KBCA’s approval. But his directive was also not followed.

According to the highly placed sources, despite the legal requirement that the plans should be approved, the Pakistan Public Works Department (PWD), which constructs buildings for federal government departments, does not think it is required though its provincial counterpart, the Sindh PWD, has started taking permissions.

The KBCA, however, insists that the two departments do not take the approval from it.

The sources said that transparency and common sense demanded that there should be some outside agency to evaluate the building plans to ensure and the building being constructed was strong and safe and if the same department or body prepared the plans and carried out the construction chance of human error, not to mention corruption, remained as was witnessed during the earthquake in the northern parts of country a couple of years back when almost all government buildings had collapsed.

They said the private builders, however, had to get their building plans approved by the KBCA to ensure the structural strength and the implementation of the town planning regulations.

The sources said the KBCA officials were also not very keen to get involved in the exercise of evaluating the building plans of, and granting the approvals to, the government buildings as they had been exempted from payment of scrutiny fees to the KBCA and the officials also did not get the “benefits” that the private builders extend to them during the scrutiny process and then the construction phase. So, since both the KBCA (not getting any fees) and its officials did not get any monetary benefits, nobody pushes for the implementation of these rules that required mandatory approval from the KBCA.

Responding to Dawn’s queries, KBCA chief controller Manzoor Qadir, referring to the Sindh Building Control Ordinance 1979 and the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations 2002, said that those documents clearly stated that: “These regulations shall apply to the whole City District of Karachi but shall not apply to the cantonment area and the projects of the National Security declared by the federal government.” He said it made no distinction between the private and the government buildings, so all the government buildings, except those exemptions mentioned above, should get approval from the KBCA, but they rarely did so, he said.

Mr Qadir said KBCA officials did not take action against government departments as they probably feared a backlash from them and preferred to stay quiet. He, however, said that now he would ensure that his officials evaluated the building plans and that the government’s law of taking approval from the KBCA was implemented.

Meanwhile, following the deadly earthquake in the northern parts of the country a couple of years back, the Sindh government had issued a letter (dated Jan 26, 2006) to all the government departments on the subject of “constitution petition No 26/2005 – Saad Mazhar etc; CDA through its chairman and others (earthquake case)” on the issue.

The letter said: “…. in pursuance of order passed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of Pakistan a review meeting was convened on Jan 17, 2006 under the chairmanship of the chief secretary.

“During the meeting it came to light that the government buildings are being constructed without getting building plans approved under the Sindh Building Control Ordinance 1979.

“The chief secretary took serious note of the matter and has been pleased to direct that henceforth no government building should be allowed to be constructed without the approval of its plan by the respective authorities nominated under the Sindh Building Control Ordinance 1979.

“It was also decided that the building plan of the government building shall be exempted from levy of any fees (including scrutiny fee) for approval by respective building control authorities.”

Responding to queries, Pak PWD chief engineer Mohammad Sarwar said the department had its own experts – architects, engineers, etc – who prepared building plans according to the sponsor departments – for which the building is to be constructed -- requirement and after the sponsor department approved it, the Pak PWD engineers constructed the building. Hence the designing and construction of the building and its strength was the responsibility of the Pak PWD and it did not take, or require, any approval from an outside agency or authority like the KBCA. This procedure had been followed in the Pak PWD for the past six decades, said Mr Sarwar, who had assumed the charge of his office a few hours earlier.

Sindh PWD chief engineer Saindad Solangi said that earlier the entire work – designing, structure, construction, etc – was done by the Sindh PWD’s own staff, including architects and engineers. But now the approval of the building plans was obtained from the KBCA / municipal authorities. He also cited the case of the Sindh House in Islamabad, which the Sindh PWD was constructing without the CDA’s approval, but when the CDA took notice of it, the building plans were modified according to the CDA’s directives. When the builders being private parties had to follow the building rules, the Sindh PWD being a government organisation should also be observing these rules, concluded Mr Solangi.