| RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC) will start survey of commercial and domestic buildings in the garrison city to check whether they were constructed according to approved building plan or not.
“The basic aim of the new survey is to streamline the building department as mostly owners of the multi-storey buildings constructed in the city without the building plan approval from the civic body,” a senior official of RMC told Dawn.
He said that the RTMA had collected Rs600 million from the fee of building plan due to low public interest to get the approval of building plan from the civic body.
“The building inspectors and regulation officials helped the people to construct the building without approval from the civic body,” he said.
“Despite the mushroom growth of construction in the city, the building plan fee was collected at Rs600 million which is far low when compared with the construction,” he said.
“One can see the mushroom growth of construction in Raja Bazaar, Commercial Market, Benazir Bhutto Road, Jamia Masjid Road, Banni Chowk, College Road aka China Market, Moti Bazaar, Sarafa Bazaar and adjoining bazaars,” he said.
RMC Chief Municipal Officer Amjad Hussain was not available for comments.
However, a senior official admitted that the survey would be started soon, which could take three to four months.
He said that RMC would also impose fines on those who constructed commercial and domestic buildings without approval of the building plans from the civic body.
He said that the imposition of fines would start soon after the completion of the survey.
“After the survey, the RTMA will be able to fix the responsibility on the building department officials for ignoring the violation. They failed to check the illegal buildings and did not launch any action in the past,” he said.
He said that the civic body did not increase the fee but wanted to expand its network and brought all the illegal structure into tax net.
“After this survey, the RMC will be able to implement building bylaws and fire safety measures as well as those items listed as essential safety measures in the developed countries,” he said.
Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2023 |
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