QUETTA, Dec 28 (APP): City Commissioner Suhailur Rehman Baloch on Wednesday chaired a high-level meeting regarding traffic, parking, encroachment and illegal building issues.
Deputy Commissioner Shahak Baloch, SSP Traffic Police Malik Javed, all Assistant Commissioners, QDA and Metropolitan Corporation officers participated in the meeting.
Addressing the meeting, the commissioner said that currently Quetta was surrounded by serious problems caused by traffic jams, encroachments, parking and construction of illegal buildings due to which the common people were facing difficulties, so it was imperative to resolve all these problems to make Quetta a modern and an excellent city.
He said the Metropolitan Corporation had an important role in the maintenance and improvement of the city, so now it had to take all such steps urgently could help in getting rid of these problems as soon as possible.
“The main reason for the increased traffic and crowding in the city is the buildings that do not have parking spaces and have not allocated space for parking. Apart from this, the construction works are going on all over the city and new buildings are being built every day, but now that the Urban Planning and Design Committee have been formed,” he added.
He said that, therefore, all such buildings which were under construction and all such buildings for which construction permits have been received should be re-examined by the Metropolitan Corporation to fully assess the building code compliance, parking and other facilities in these buildings saying that constructed buildings cannot be used for any purpose other than parking.
The Metropolitan Corporation shall ensure that all such old buildings and newly constructed buildings use their basements exclusively for parking and by checking all rules and regulations and complying with all legal requirements of the Building Code, he said.
He said that the Metro Corporation should check all its records within three days and prepare a detailed report on how many applications they had received regarding the construction of buildings, those who had issued NOCs should ensure that the NOCs issued were correct in all respects with respect to rules and regulations.
He said that action should be taken against those building that were constructed in the city without a building code.
He directed to Metropolitan Corporation to inform them about staff strength along with available machinery, resources and all other details, apart from this, all the records of how many legal parking spaces were available in the city, when they were issued, when their auction tenders were done, and also provided an accounting of the amount received from all the parking spaces in the city.
On this occasion, the officer of the Metropolitan Corporation briefed the Commissioner Quetta Division Suhailur Rahman Baloch that 600 cars were being parked in the parking plaza which has been established on the Circular Road in the center of the city and some construction work was left in this parking plaza, with the completion of which, the capacity of vehicles for parking would be more than 800.
Traffic Police and Metropolitan staff have declared no parking at 6 locations across the city, due to which the traffic pressure has started to decrease in the area, official said in briefing.
He said that thus, there was a capacity of 300 vehicles in the parking lot of Mutton Market, the capacity of 250 vehicles
and more than hundred motorcycles were being parked in Baldia Plaza.
SP Traffic Police said that the city-wide anti-encroachment work in collaboration with the Metropolitan staff has started yielding substantial results, and such actions would continue in the future also, besides this, immediate action to be taken to remove the carriages from the roads and these carriages would be provided with alternative places.
In this way, there will be no problem in their employment and the flow of traffic on the roads will not be affected, he said.
Finally, Commissioner Quetta Division Suhailur Rahman Baloch said that this city was common to all of us and we all have to get rid of these problems together.
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