Building Control Authority for metropolis:Punjab

[LahoreEstate]

By: Yasir Habib Khan | Published: May 18, 2009
LAHORE - On the pattern of Karachi Building Control Authority, the Punjab government is planning to constitute Building Control Authority (BCA) in the City to regulate construction of commercial and residential buildings keeping in view existing building bylaws. The decision will help checking rampant violations in the construction business.
The move to form Building Control Authority followed remarks passed by a full bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan headed by Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, which had summoned chief secretary Punjab, district nazim Lahore, and director general Lahore Development Authority (LDA) in a case regarding illegally constructed high-rise buildings in last month.
According to the sources, a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Javed Mehmood and attended by DG LDA Shahid Mehmood, secretary Planning and Development and others held the other day agreed to erect a separate agency following the footsteps of Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA) instead of present pattern of prototypes like Wasa and Tepa. The meeting decided that after finalising the modalities for the formation of the authority, proposal would be submitted to the Punjab Assembly for formal legislation, sources revealed. They further disclosed that comprehensive report and recommendations for the constituting the proposed agency would be presented during the court hearing going to be held today (Monday).
It important to note that with the formation of the proposed authority, the department within LDA and Towns’ wings dealing with building construction in the city would be made defunct.
Chief Engineer TEPA Imtiaz Abid, a subordinate agency of Tepa, told The Nation on Sunday that the mess regarding building construction, especially high-rise structures, kept augmenting due to the absence of a proper mechanism which could not be streamlined. He said town planners without even basic knowledge of building architecture, structural design, complexity of mapping, height and strength of buildings, had the powers to allow the construction of a building.
He believed that traffic engineers, urban planners, architects, environmentalists, town planners and other stakeholders should be involved during construction process.

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