HYDERABAD, Jan 12: Additional Advocate General (AAG) Masood A. Noorani on Friday inspected six under-construction residential-cum-commercial plazas and found that they were being built in gross violation of building bylaws.

The AAG visited the plazas under the directives of Hyderabad circuit bench of Sindh High Court to begin inquiries against the projects whose legality had been questioned in a public interest petition filed by a resident of the area Ikramuddin alias Guddo.

He said that the projects lacked fire extinguishing system and emergency corridors. They might cause to block fresh air and lead to huge traffic jams and pollution in the vicinity. The projects had almost no space for parking, he said.

The AAG earlier visited three plazas and completed his inspection of all the six on Friday along with executive engineering provincial buildings Akhtar Hussain Dawach, director building control of Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) Nadeem Khan and superintendent of AAG's office Yaqoob Qureshi.

He said that he found while visiting the under-construction Ahmed Khan Centre, which had 30 flats, he noted that the space left for parking was around 936 sq ft whereas plan envisaged 1,145 sq ft.

Director building control told him that only 20 per cent of normal car parking was reserved for motorbikes in a project being constructed in a 30 ft wide street. The building had no space for customers' parking and was surrounded by two other under-construction projects and schools, which after completion would lead to extreme congestion.

The width of staircase was seven feet against nine feet as per approved plan, which would make extremely difficult for the residents to take up or bring down a dead body or furniture, he said.

The AAG called for soil test reports and structural designs. The steps of the shops were likely to be built on one fifth of already narrow street, while 15 shops on the ground floor had no lavatory, he noted.

He took a round of multi-storey plaza being built in place of popular old Café George. "Permission for adjacent ground plus five storey plaza in place of the cafe would amount to rubbing salt into the wounds of residents," he said.

He then came to Ghousia Centre and took note of poor quality of construction. The project’s construction began in 1999 and completed some years back with 38 shops on mezzanine and nine flats in the three-storey building.

The parking space in the basement was also converted into shops while director building control said when the HDA attempted to demolish shops it failed to do so.

The AAG noted that such violation went unnoticed for full seven years as no legal proceedings were initiated against this flagrant violation. The director said that until 1999 it was not necessary for builders to obtain NOCs from concerned utilities. The condition was made mandatory in subsequent years, he said.

The builder erected a steel staircase in violation of the plan to go up to the mezzanine and reserved a common passage for customers, shopkeepers and residents in violation of building by-laws.

Later on he added a separate narrow entrance to the adjacent labyrinth from which it was impossible to come out in case fire broke out. The plaza lacked sewerage system and stairs had been built over an open drain.

Mr. Noorani observed that the procedure and bylaws of building control department were defective and needed massive changes to ensure people’s civic needs.