Unchecked construction of illegal structures

LAHORE

Lack of demolition equipment is cited as  the common excuse by officials of LDA’s  Town Planning Wing for not taking action against construction of illegal buildings across the city.

It is observed that if citizens point out any ongoing illegal construction to the officials of LDA’s Town Planning Wing, they are given a common answer that the wing does not have appropriate machinery to raze the structure. Citizens allege that actually this answer is a pretext to give ‘unofficial relaxation’ to the people constructing buildings, especially commercial structures, marriage halls and marquees, in the city. One can witness construction of different commercial buildings, marriage halls and marquees in various city localities against LDA’s building by-laws. Township, Johar Town and adjacent localities witness a boom in construction of marriage halls and marquees, which are mostly being constructed on 10 marla and one kanal residential plots without any parking facility.

According to LDA’s rules and regulations, the minimum land required for setting up a marquee is eight kanal whereas at least four kanals land is necessary for constructing a marriage hall with two kanal to be left vacant for parking.

It is pertinent to mention that enforcing LDA’s building by-laws is the job of it’s Town Planning Wing but in most of cases the officials of this wing did not take any action against big builders during the construction period.

Recently, the scribe pointed out construction of a marquee against LDA’s building bylaws and regulations in a one kanal plot near Sadiq Chowk, Township, to LDA’s Town Planning Director Nadeem Zaidi. Several other marquees have already been constructed in the same area as well as on the same road against LDA rules.

When asked, LDA officials said these marquees and marriage halls owners had stay orders from the courts. The newspaper had already carried out a detailed news story of relaxation given to private builders by LDA officials and after publication of this story a team of LDA went to the under-construction marquee and demolished the outer wall and main entrance. Following the LDA operation, the owners of this building put up tents outside the demolished structure and continued construction work behind the curtains.

When contacted, LDA’s Town Planning Director Nadeem Zaidi said his team had demolished the marquee.

To a question that the main structure was still intact, he said his section didn’t have machinery to demolish the marquee structure. He said he will direct his staff to demolish this marquee as soon as possible.