Islamabad - The Capital Development Authority (CDA) is preparing a third party mechanism to monitor the development work in private housing schemes to protect the rights of general public as well as to curtail illegal developments.
A summary in this regard is on the agenda of CDA board for its meeting scheduled to be held on Wednesday at the Chairman Secretariat. The planning wing of CDA has forwarded the said summary for final decision.
There are over a hundred private housing schemes in capital city, but a very few have got approval of their layout plan and subsequently obtained a no objection certificate (NOC) from CDA.
In order to regulate the developments in authorized private housing schemes, there are certain rules according to which the sponsors (owners or managers of any housing scheme) are bound to provide the detailed work schedule in respect of implementation of their schemes to CDA while they are also in compulsion to submit monthly progress report to the planning wing of CDA till the completion of scheme.
CDA mortgage a certain amount of plots as guarantee at the time of issuing NOC to any private housing schemes to ensure that the sponsors will not deviate from the approved layout plan whereas they will also not do substandard development works i.e. roads, parks etc in society.
In case the sponsors fail to abide by the instructions contained in the Inspection Note, the CDA shall take appropriate measures to rectify the situation, which may include getting the work done at the risk and cost of the sponsors by disposing of plots mortgaged with the CDA.
If the development cost exceeds the amount deposited by the sponsors with the CDA or the sale proceeds of the mortgaged plots, the same shall be recoverable by the CDA from the sponsors or the allottees of plots in the scheme as arrears of land revenue under the CDA Ordinance, 1960.”
CDA is mandated to monitor the abovementioned development works by book and it is entitled to issue a completion certificate to any housing scheme if it complies with all the directions of CDA issued time to time.
However, it is a big question mark on the performance of civic body that it could not issue completion certificate to housing societies at large except a single private housing society situated on the northern strip.
The sources inside planning wing accused the shortage of staff members in failing to provide a prudent mechanism to monitor and oversight the housing schemes.
“With the increase of the demand of housing needs, the number of housing societies also increased but we did not improve our strength”, an officer of Planning wing commented, adding: “Resultantly, the mechanism proposed in rules has been overlooked causing embarrassment to the authority at many forums”
The aforementioned summary proposed that the CDA should outsource the monitoring mechanism to third party by engaging reputed consultants in this regard. These consultants will observe the progress and quality of development works by the sponsors in private housing schemes.
Meanwhile, while considering the fee recovered from Private Housing Schemes on account of monitoring as far less than the international standards, the summary further requested CDA board to increase monitoring fee from 1500 per kanal to 20,000 per Kanal, but the increased fee will be collected by the authority in two equal instalments of 50%, one in advance at NOC level and second in subsequent year.
The summary sounds good in its formation however its implementation would be a challenge for CDA as most of the time it made the rules but could not implement the same in letter and spirit.