LAHORE, July 6: The under-consideration model building and zoning regulations were rejected here on Friday by a high-level meeting which also declared that the tehsil municipal administrations did not have the capacity to enforce them.

The meeting, presided over by Law and Local Government Minister Raja Basharat, was attended by Local Government Secretary Akhlaq Tarar, Lahore Nazim Mian Amir Mahmood and DCO Mian Ejaz, LDA Director-General Hassan Nawaz Tarar, Punjab Advocate General Chaudhry Aftab and other senior officials of the departments concerned.

The rules are being drafted by the Nespak. An official source said the law minister directed Nespak to quickly finalize them (in the light of the meeting) so that these could be notified after approval from the chief minister.

The Nespak officials gave a briefing on the draft rules they had “prepared after studying building construction systems in many cities like Bombay, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangkok, and Karachi.”

One of proposals said that the number of floors of each multi-storey building should be linked with the width of the road they are situated upon.

During the meeting, various proposals to regulate the construction of multi-storey buildings and commercial plazas in big cities, especially in Lahore, were also mooted.

Almost all the participants reportedly raised objections about the draft rules. The law minister wanted to know whether the proposals contained any implementation mechanism. He said it was the responsibility of TMAs to regulate building construction within their jurisdiction as per the Local Government Ordinance but they had no mechanism to enforce the related rules if at all they were updated.

Junior officers were supposed to act as town planners and police simply ignored them whenever a request was made for enforcing any building rules. Senior officials should be assigned the job and the team should include structural designers, planners and engineers, the minister said, pressing for the development of an effective implementation mechanism.

The source said at this point the minister was informed that there was a dearth of structural designers in the province. The LDA had recently invited applications for recruitment of structural engineers but none appeared for interview, it was informed.

The minister ordered adoption of security and safety measures for multi-storey buildings while keeping in view their design and strength.

During Saturday’s meeting the Nespak had presented revised model rules after the rejection of their initial proposal. “Today, Nespak officials had brought revised rules which were also found faulty,” the source claimed.

He said the model building and zoning regulations were being prepared for the Lahore city district government, and towns and development authorities in five big cities in the province, including Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan and Faisalabad.

SC ORDER: Hearing the case of buildings constructed illegally in Lahore, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday and Justice Falak Sher asked the Punjab chief minister to make a building control authority.