ISLAMABAD: The city managers on Thursday approved hiring of consultant for carrying out Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) for newly announced housing scheme, Park Enclave III on Park Road.

The CDA board, which met here with Chairman CDA Amer Ali Ahmed in the chair, approved hiring of consultant for the housing scheme.

Last year, the CDA had launched the scheme and now the civic agency wanted to start development work.

The board also approved a summary for strengthening Building Control Directorate (BCD) by approving 20 new posts – 15 building inspector and five land surveyors.

Two directorates BSD-I and BSD –II are currently fully functional but facing shortage of inspectors, while civic agency also decided to make the BCD-III properly operational.

The officials, once appointed, will be posted in these three directorates.

The CDA which according to CDA Ordinance 1960 is supposed to regulate all buildings in Islamabad, but it never moved beyond the sectors that resulted into mushroom growth of unauthorised buildings in rural areas of Islamabad and illegitimate and illegal housing scheme.

A few years ago, the CDA set up BCD-II to deal with housing scheme but still it has no proper mechanism to deal with the buildings in rural areas.

However, the civic agency now wanted to make BCD-III properly operational, which will look into rural areas also.

Currently, the utility connections are technically banned for unauthorised buildings including houses, as in 2016-17, government had linked the provision of utility connections with CDA’s No-Objection Certificate (NoC).

CDA does not issue NOC to the building being constructed without the approval of building plans and to the buildings which have not been regularised.

However, sources said after regularisation of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Banigala House, the civic agency has been receiving applications for regularisation of buildings.

“We think in coming months, more people will apply as a committee formed by federal cabinet is formulating its recommendations with regard to ban on utility connections.

It seems, the committee will recommend for lifting of ban and then we will receive overwhelming numbers of applications from rural areas, so now, we want to strengthen our all BSDs,” said an officer of CDA.

The sources said that board also approved provisional offer of allotment of 5.4 acre land in the south east of Supreme Court building for housing offices of Attorney General, Office of Advocate Prosecutor General and other allied offices.

Meanwhile, the board also decided to apply assistance package of federal government to CDA officials/officers, die during the service.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2021