ISLAMABAD – The Government must shift the foreign embassies operating in the residential areas of the capital city to the highly secured diplomatic enclave to lessen the woes of citizens, which they are facing because of the presence of these missions.
Emtiaz Enyat Elahi chairman Capital Development Authority (CDA) said this during an exclusive interview with Pakistan Today. “The CDA is very keen to solve the ordeal of people residing in sectors G-6, E-7, F-7, F-8 and F-10, which they are copping with because of the presence of embassies and foreign missions in their neighborhood,” Elahi said.
The CDA chief said that keeping the problems of the people in mind, the CDA had allocated 700 acres land for establishment of new diplomatic enclave. “As many as 43 diplomatic missions and 48 foreign companies are functioning in residential sectors of Islamabad in complete violation of CDA by-laws.”
He said that CDA allocated land to embassies and foreign missions on the directives of Foreign Office (FO) but added that only FO could ask them to shift their offices to diplomatic enclave and CDA could not take action against them on its own. “The issue of shifting of embassies to diplomatic enclave would solve easily if government devise proper road map in this regard,” he said.
Some embassies and foreign missions functioning in residential areas include Algeria, Norway, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Hungary, Denmark, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Philippines, Belgium, Malaysia, Sudan, Oman, Libya, Brazil, Romania, Afghanistan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Holland.
The existing Diplomatic Enclave houses over 40 embassies. The new Diplomatic Enclave will accommodate over 50 foreign missions, offices and residences of diplomats. Elahi said that CDA had so far not launched any mega operation against commercial use of residential buildings or Non Confirming Use (NCU) because of some legal constraints.
“CDA takes action and issue notice against individual cases. A number of government offices operation in residential areas which is one of the major hurdle for CDA to implement its by-laws,” he said. He said that lack of proper financial management was one of the reasons of rising financial cries in CDA.
In the past the high ups of the authority had only focused on sale of plot for making money but paid no attention to explore other resources to avoid financial crises. “To control financial crises and to discourage sale of plot of policy the CDA has recently devised a comprehensive financial management system including launching of municipal bonds and public private partnership program”, he said.
The CDA chairman said that they had decided to execute self-sustainable projects in the future and would further cut down its non-development expenditure through well organized financial management system. “CDA is the first municipality of the country, which is contemplating to launch municipal bonds to finance its development projects,” he said.
Elahi said that CDA had reduced non-development expenditures to great extent, especially, in the head of telephone and POL charges of vehicles as due to financial cries CDA could not launched new development projects. However, he said that authority was releasing funds for the ongoing projects like construction of Zero Point Interchange and Lethrar road to ensure their timely completion.
He said that in order to control wastage of water because of decade of old water supply lines and to control water crises in the city, CDA’s concerned department prepared a PC for up-gradation of water supply system in the city. “When government allocates funds for it CDA will start working on it,” he said.
When asked about gross irregularities in the allotment of plots in Kurri Model Village and agro farms, Elahi said that the CDA had declared the allotment process was invalid and cancelled all allotment despite huge pressure. “CDA has also taken action against those people who were allegedly involved in it,” he said. Elahi said that to solve growing housing shortage in the city the CDA had decided to develop stalled sector on immediate basis.
“We have decided to develop the stalled sectors like sector I-15, D-12 by utilizing own resources,” he said. He said that stern action would be taken against housing schemes or individuals who had illegally occupied government owned land. “Recently CDA has conducted operation against land grabbers and vacated 11000 kanal CDA land,” he said.
He said that CDA had prepared various plan to solve rising parking problems in the city and the authority would soon implement it.
All embassies should be moved to Diplomatic Enclave
