SBCA finalising criteria to allow schools, clinics in residential areas to operate

The Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) has been considering to allow schools and clinics established in the residential areas to continue to operate if their plots measure at least 240 square yards and they are situated on roads having a width of at least 60 feet.

Sindh Building Control Authority Director General (DG) Zafar Ahsan disclosed this to The News on Sunday.

A large number of clinics and schools have been illegally established in residential areas in the city, Ahsan said. He added that as per orders of the Supreme Court, being commercial entities, they were liable to be demolished but doing so would result in a major health and educational crisis as a large number of schoolchildren would be deprived of education and many patients would not be able to seek medical advice from clinics in their locality.

The SBCA DG said the authority wanted to regularise schools and clinics in the residential areas and allow them to continue their operations if they met some requirements. He explained that the authority was considering to allow only those schools and clinics to continue that had been built on at least 240 square yards and which were situated on at least 60-foot-wide roads.

He also clarified that the said proposed criteria were only for the schools and the clinics, not for the hospitals. He said the administrations of various schools and clinics had earlier requested the authority to allow them to continue their operations because if they were demolished, a large number of people would be greatly inconvenienced.

Ahsan, however, said the SBCA would formally announce its decision in this regard after consulting the stakeholders. Responding to a question about ever-increasing vertical growth in Karachi, he said the high population of the city compelled the builders to construct high-rises because several families could live in them.