ISLAMABAD, Aug 26 Members of All-Pakistan Alliance for Katchi Abadis have said slums will continue to mushroom in Islamabad because they represent an informal market response to the failure of the state in providing formal housing market.

They said the issue of katchi abadis needed to be addressed in the long run through a comprehensive change in urban planning paradigms so as to account for vast growing population of working people in the capital.

A delegation of the alliance led by its chairman Aasim Sajjad Akhtar on Wednesday held a meeting with the chairman of the CDA and presented him a list of demands and requested him to deal with the issue of housing shortage in the federal capital.

They lamented that the CDA was not following numerous commitments made to katchi abadi dwellers over the past several years.

They said Alipur Farash was still without gas despite the fact that development work had been going on in the settlement for the last three years.

Similarly, the CDA about one and a half years back had issued NOCs so that the predominantly Christian settlements in F-6, F-7 and G-7 could obtain individual electricity and gas meters. However, later the NOCs were invoked, they added.

The chairman CDA said the authority had to adhere to the national policy on katchi abadis 2001, whereby all government agencies are bound to give proprietary rights to informal settlements with more than 40 homes.

It was decided that a meeting of the CDA katchi abadi cell, senior planners and representatives of the alliance would be held in a few days and finalise plans to move forward for regularisation of the katchi abadis.