KARACHI, Nov 14: Around 400 officials of the Karachi Building Control Authority on Thursday joined their duties at 18 different town administration offices as part of the local government’s devolution plan.

These officials include controllers of buildings, deputy controller of building, senior building inspectors and senior planning assistants.

The new designation of controllers of buildings, who would be now working under the directives of their concerned Town Nazims, will be Town Building Control Officers.

With the transfer of about 400 officials of the KBCA to the town administrations, the strength of the employees of the KBCA has been halved, and the departments/offices which will continue to function at the KBCA office situated in the City Government Complex include town planning, design section, structure/environment, administration and finance.

The sources said that the departments which had been retained by the KBCA would become nucleus offices of the city district government after December 3, which is the last date for getting illegal buildings regularised after paying penalty charges.

Earlier, speaking to the officials transferred to the town administrations, CCOB Brig (rtd) A.S Nasir exhorted them to make the city district government more strong by improving their performance.

He directed the officials to issue challans to those owners of marriage halls who had applied for getting their halls/gardens regularized in a week.

He also asked them to review the regularization fees of all those houses which had been built on 60 to 240 square yards, so that people belonging to low-income group could benefit from the government’s regularization policy.