City Govt dissolves building plan scrutiny committee

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

LAHORE –With the four-member plan scrutiny committee failing to bring desired results, the City District Government reverted to the old mechanism of giving final approval to proposed building plans at the highest level, officials told The Nation on Thursday.
Now, as per the previous arrangements, District Coordination Officer (DCO) Lahore will give final approval to the proposed building plans after processing and scrutiny by District Officer (DO) Spatial Planning and his staff.
About a couple of months back, DCO Lahore delegated his powers to a four-member committee to streamline and ensure proper scrutiny of submitted plans. The purpose of the committee was to evaluate and approve building plans by exercising the powers of DCO Lahore. Executive District Officer (EDO) Works and Services headed the committee. DO Architect 1 Muhammad Taloot, DO Spatial Planning and Commercialisation (SP&C) Qamar Islam and DO Roads 2 were other three members.
The Committee held only one meeting in two months to evaluate eight building plans but only discussed one. The committee members raised a variety of objections over the building plan under discussion without proposing any change. Interestingly, the similar objections were written off previously by the High Level Design Committee (HLDC).
With the internal strife and lack of coordination among members causing inordinate delay in the processing and approval of building plans, the DCO dissolved the committee and reverted to the previous mechanism.
After the dissolution of the committee, the CDG has approved over 100 building plans in a couple of days, the officials said.
Terming the dissolution of the committee a step in the right direction, the officials said that the City fathers have at least corrected one previous wrong.
“The constitution of the committee was simply another violation of Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2001. Earlier, the government took back powers of approving building plans from Town Municipal Administrations (TMAs). Under the PLGO 2001, processing and approval of building plans falls under the preview of TMAs. The Punjab Government conferred powers of giving final approval to building plans on DCO Lahore. As such the relevant staff of all the TMAs was put on the disposal of DO Spatial Planning,” said an official requesting anonymity, adding, that all these steps were contradictory to the spirit of PLGO 2001.