Sepa serves notices to cantonment boards,KMC and other bodies

Environmental watchdog says 28 major roads of Karachi illegally

commercialised by these authorities

The provincial environmental watchdog issued notices to military and civilian housing, development and building authorities on Sunday over the commercialisation of 28 major roads in Karachi in violation of environmental laws.

Roads cannot be commercialised without conducting an environmental impact assessment (EIA) there.

The military authorities include the Malir, Faisal, Korangi Creek, Karachi, Clifton and Manora Cantonments. The civilian ones are the Karachi Development Authority, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and the Sindh Building Control Authority. The Defence Housing Authority, a semi-military body, too has been served a notice.

In separate letters to the six cantonment boards and development and building control authorities, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) not only demanded that EIA reports be submitted but sought traffic plans of the 28 roads to ascertain whether or not their commercialisation was casuing traffic jams and pollution.

The Sepa director general said the environmental watchdog was not taken on board while commercialising the city’s roads, allowing construction of high-rises and skyscrapers. He added that as per the Sindh Environmental Protection Act 2014, any change in land use must be preceded by an environmental impact assessment in which the cumulative impact of all alterations in land use needed to be clearly evaluated.

Furthermore, the watchdog’s director general Naeem Mughal added, no development could proceed with any alteration unless an approval was granted by Sepa.

Mughal said  Sepa’s role had been ignored as and the densification of roads had been undertaken without a master plan.

“Most plots on commercial roads are being converted into multistor3y buildings and high-rises,” he added.

He maintained that the policy adopted for strip commercialisation was against environmental sustainability principles and neither socially nor environmentally acceptable.

“For each environmental impact assessment document submitted to Sepa, we accept the plan with a number of conditions to suit to the requirements of environmental and social considerations. We wouldn’t have been required to do this if the master plan department had done its job by keeping the sustainability principles in view and evaluating the environmental and social impacts of densification and commercialisation.”

He regretted that traffic congestion had already become a major problem in Karachi and with the densification of roads, thousands of more vehicles will ply on them further degrading air quality..

“What was needed at the outset was to have a meaningful traffic management plan that could accommodate the parking of the vehicles into the parking plazas,” the Sepa DG observed. “In the absence of a traffic management plan, buildings have been constructed that leave the parking issue to the owner of the vehicles causing frequent traffic jams on roads and tremendously increasing the woes of the general public.”