November 29, 2008	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 30, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 28: The city government’s road commercialisation policy should be re-examined and stringent checks should be placed on the process, as a majority of people living along commercialised roads have rejected the policy.

This was one of the main observations made at a seminar on the city government’s roads commercialisation policy, organised by Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment on Friday.While former city nazim Niamatullah Khan defended the commercialisation policy that was introduced during his term as nazim, Shehri’s general secretary Amber Ali Bhai observed that the policy was a ‘money-making scam’.

She said she was not against commercialisation and densification but made it clear that there was a dire need to re-examine the whole policy.

The Karachi Building Control Authority’s chief controller and the executive district officer of the city government’s master plan department were also invited but they did not attend the seminar.

Farhan Anwar, an urban planner, said the city government had formulated the road commercialisation policy in 2004 by converting the status of 17 major roads to commercial. He criticised the Karachi Strategic Development Plan-2020, saying that the document promoted all kinds of commercialisation that some people even termed it ‘a real estate development plan’.

According to the survey, conducted at the time of formulation of the roads commercialisation policy, 80 per cent people living along such roads were against commercialisation.He unveiled the results of the latest survey conducted by the Shehri of 150 households living along five commercialised roads ie Khalid bin Waleed Road, Allama Iqbal Road, Sir Syed Road, Rashid Minhas Road and Sher Shah Suri Road. Seventy per cent people rejected the policy of commercialisation, he said, adding that 90 per cent complained about increasing encroachment while 83 per cent said that traffic volume had increased to a great extent.

However, 86 per cent people did not bother to register an official complaint as 85 per cent of them believed that it was useless.

The urban planner said that the vision of all development plans for Karachi from the Bombay Planning Act-1915 to the KSDP-2020 had never been implemented mainly due to the absence of continuity in implementing and financing mechanism, political mandate and lack of consultation with stake-holders.

He said that except the KSDP-2020 all development plans were prepared by the defunct Karachi Development Authority that did not have any implementing authority.

Regarding the commercialisation process, he said it was started in the 1970s when high-rise buildings were promoted, which caused densification of the inner city and stress on civic infrastructure.

From 1975 to 1999 some 380 residential plots were commercialised and in 1990 the defunct KDA commercialised six roads. However, the KDA held in abeyance the cases of commercialisation in 1999 till the formulation of a comprehensive commercialisation policy. The KDA conducted a pilot study of the PECHS area and the present commercialisation policy was based on its findings.

He considered a growing demand for commercial land, weak city governments, planning and development inadequacies and maladministration and corruption as the causes of densification of the inner city and stress on the civic infrastructure.

Dr Noman Ahmed of the NED University of Engineering and Technology gave a presentation on unplanned commercialisation and the present issues. He suggested creation of a city-level planning agency to undertake the issue of commercialisation and densification.

Niamatullah Khan defended the commercialisation policy and said that he had given the opportunity to the citizens to add their proposals in the commercialisation policy. Violation of buildings laws was rampant in the jurisdiction of cantonment boards, he alleged. “Cantonment boards are occupying areas of Karachi and I think the division between the cantonments and the city government should be abolished,” he added.

He said that at present hundreds of parks had been encroached upon while a fast-food chain was permitted to construct its outlet on a pavement.

Zahid Saeed, UC-7 nazim of Jamshed Town, said that the commercialisation of selective plots was also going on and recently the city nazim allowed commercialisation of a residential plot despite the fact that the union council, the master plan department and the commercialisation committee had rejected it.