Businessmen hold CDA responsible for encroachments

Islamabad: Capital Development Authority (CDA) has played a central role in mushroom growth of encroachments in the city. Strict action is due against officials of the CDA whose appetite for personal gains has ruined the capital city, said Waqar Hamdi, former president ICCI.

Talking to the business community, he said that ongoing operation was launched without proper planning resulting in demolishing of legal properties worth hundreds of millions of rupees.

Encroachments in residential and commercial areas and land grabbing cannot flourish without the involvement of CDA officials as Islamabad has become a goldmine for the corrupt, he added.

State land worth billions of rupees has been under illegal occupation while CDA for years ignored any forceful operation to remove encroachments, he noted.

Presently, a lot of commercial activity is going on in the residential areas which include restaurants, clinics, boutiques, guest houses etc. but CDA has never taken serious action against them.

Recently, the CDA has pulled down illegal structures with the support of the federal government, police and the capital administration but an action against those officials who never bothered to take action at the time when the illegal structures were being raised is still awaited, he said.

He noted that instead of taking action to halt the illegal construction at the initial stages, the officials kept themselves restricted to issuing “notices” which absolved them of responsibility and embolden the offenders.

CDA officials have also facilitated encroachments in residential and commercial areas while unauthorised construction on private lands has become the order of the day for crooked developers.

Thousands of buildings have been constructed in violation of the building bylaws, particularly in rural areas of the capital as CDA has always ignored the violation of its building bylaws in rural areas in return of favors.