FDA seals five illegal housing colonies

FAISALABAD: The Faisalabad Development Authority Thursday sealed five illegal housing colonies, besides removing their illegal constructions and sale offices.

A spokesman for the FDA said that the illegal residential schemes include Azafi Abadi Chak 263 Kannian, Hidayat Town, Azafi Abadi Dijkot, Gulshan-e-Habib and New Dijkot City. He said that formal letters had also been forwarded to the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) managing director (MD), the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (Fesco) Planning and Designing manager and the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) general manager (GM) to avoid providing facilities in these illegal housing colonies till their developers got approval from the FDA. He said that under the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2001 and Punjab Development of Cities Act 1976, all the housing scheme developers are bound to seek prior permission from the FDA before developing any residential scheme, but these housing colonies were developed without fulfilling legal requirements.

Taking notice of such irregularities, the FDA sealed these illegal residential schemes and demolished their illicit constructions and sale offices besides writing a letter to the district collector for not registering sale and purchase of any plot in these colonies. The FDA had also directed the developers of these colonies to complete all legal requirements before sale any plot in the house schemes, otherwise strict action would be taken against them without any discrimination, the spokesman added.

CPWB searching for parents of 14 children: The Child Protection Welfare Bureau (CPWB) is searching for parents of 14 children caught from various city roads while begging. Bureau in-charge Ijaz Aslam Dogar on Thursday said that the CPWB teams had tried to contact at the addresses provided by the children but could not succeed to search their parents. He said that children — Allah Rakha, Shan, Shabbir, Qadeer Rafiq, Kalimullah, Ijaz Mujahid, Yasir Shafqat, Kaman Shaukat, Ali Hassan, Hamza Younis, Amjad Anwar, Zulqarnain, Manga, Shahzad and Irfan are present in the bureau.

131 vehicles impounded: The Excise and Taxation Department has impounded 131 vehicles during a general hold-up across the division due to default of token tax during last week.

According to the Excise Department sources, the teams set up pickets at important entry and exit points of all the four districts of the division and checked about 4,210 vehicles, including cars, buses, trucks, vans. As many as 131 vehicles were found defaulter of token tax, 49 vehicle lacked registration, 82 other vehicles registered in other provinces.