In a city of four million people, there are hundreds of illegal housing societies, minting billions of rupees from the people, which even lack basic amenities. Failure to launch a single housing scheme in three decades speaks volume about Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) about civic agency’s apathy and incompetence.
Unregistered and unauthorized housing societies are at loggerheads with the civic management. Some bigwig property dealers have sold plots ear-marked for schools, mosques, parks and markets to people on commercial rates and RDA has not taken any action against the illegalities.
There are only 40 housing schemes registered with the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and rest of the housing societies have been established without getting the No Objection Certificate (NoC) from the concernig authority, i.e. RDA.
More than 100 housing societies in Rawalpindi failed to adopt the rules set by the government due to the negligence of RDA. RDA was established about 30 years ago to carve a master plan of the city and monitor development activities. However, there has been a mushroom growth of low quality housing schemes, without taking RDA into confidence.
Despite the fact that there is a dire need to formulate plans to develop both rural and urban areas and provide basic facilities to the residents of Rawalpindi, RDA has not been up to the mark.
It was also the duty of RDA to ensure that the developers of housing societies provide maximum facilities to the residents. However, RDA has failed to perform its duty.
The Deputy Director RDA Imran Qureshi claimed that RDA had not established a single housing society when asked about the registration and action against illegal housing societies. “As per the law, the housing societies should transfer plots allocated for mosques, schools, community centres and parks in their schemes in the name of the registration authority. But it is not being done,” he said. Qureshi also said that it was the duty of the developers to build schools, community centres, parks and mosques, the RDA had to monitor the developers to ensure that they fulfilled the requirements.
