LAHORE: The Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore (MCL) and the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) signed on Monday a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the automation of the construction permits regarding warehouses which are at least 1,300m2 in size and are to be used for the housing of nontoxic materials.

The automated systems will have the capacity to be scaled up and at a later stage include the issuance of construction permits of residential, commercial and industrial properties.

Lahore Mayor Mubashar Javed and PITB chairman Dr Umar Saif signed the MoU. Dr Saif said two years back e-Khidmat centers were established for providing different services under one roof in a fixed turnaround time. Under the right to service, he said, six citizen facilitation service centers at Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Sahiwal and Lahore had been established that provided services to 553,720 people.

These centres would also add MCL services while under the MoU the time duration for permission to construct a warehouse would be limited from the previous seven months duration to 21 working days through automation of the process by the PITB that generate business activity.

Mr Javed said under android system the building plans would be supervised. He said the MoU would ensure business-friendly improvements in aspects of the current construction permits arrangements which would be reflected in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business (DB) indicator related to ‘Construction Permits’ (CP), improvements in service delivery, improved transparency of the construction permits system, automation of current processes related to the issuance of construction permits and integrated public facilitation counters.

Initially, these services would be offered by the citizen facilitation and service centre in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2017