KARACHI, Feb 5: Construction of illegal buildings and inclusion of footpaths within the compound walls of houses continues unabated in different towns of the city, unfortunately without any action from the relevant authorities.

A number of people in different localities have extended the structures of their houses beyond the permissible limits either by including certain portion of the adjacent streets and even footpaths in their compound walls or by violating the mandatory requirement of a compulsory open space, thus reducing the width of the adjacent streets and depriving pedestrians of their right to footpaths. Such a situation poses a great threat to the pedestrians, who are left with no choice but to walk on roads amid fast-moving vehicles.

Though such a trend of illegal construction of buildings and inclusion of a portion of streets and even footpaths can be seen in various parts of the city, most violations of the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations (KB&TPR) are openly being made in different blocks of PECHS, Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Federal B Area.

According to people residing in Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Blocks 13-A, 13-B, 13-C and 13-D, owners of a number of houses in these blocks have either extended the structures of their houses beyond the permissible limits or have included a certain portion of footpaths and even adjacent streets within the compound walls of their houses.

Besides, owners of a number of houses have either erected barbed wires all along the edge of the footpaths or have set up lawns on the footpaths passing along their houses as if the footpaths were their private property, thus forcing the pedestrians to walk amidst vehicular traffic at great risk to their lives.

“The worst-sufferers of these illegal encroachments are women and children”, said an elderly woman who lives in the Semorina apartment building just adjacent to Hassan Square apartment building.

Another person residing in the same neighborhood said that in the absence of footpaths he and his family members often remained perturbed about the safety of their school-going children as one of the nearby roads from where thousands of motorists took a short-cut to Federal B Area via Sehba Akhtar Road had developed many deep craters owing to the recurring menace of leaking sewage lines.

Apart from this, a number of builders have constructed ground floors of their multi-storeyed apartment buildings in such a manner that there existed partition wall in between almost every building and as a result of which pedestrians are forced to step down from footpaths at several places.

People residing in several apartment buildings, located in the vicinity of a playground where weekly bazaars are held, complained that on the one hand, all the surrounding streets had become congested owing to the haphazard parking of vehicles and on the other, footpaths of the nearby apartment buildings had almost vanished.

Referring to trend of constructing shops in residential buildings, people residing in PECHS Block 2, complained that since a number of shops had sprung in the houses, located near Tayyaba Masjid, vehicular traffic passing through the adjacent road often got stuck due to the vehicles parked near these shops.

They also pointed out that almost all the footpaths of main Khalid Bin Waleed Road had already vanished as owners of car-showrooms, had encroached upon the footpaths.