A hundred commercial building files, one inspection team, and at the end of it four building inspectors suspended and a fifth dismissed. That is the result of a review inside the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board’s Building Control Department, as reported by The Express Tribune on September 17.
Cantonment Executive Officer Amir Rashid set it going after complaints about illegal commercial construction, breaches of approved plans, and buildings put up with no approved plan at all in several wards. He formed a special team of Senior Draftsman Raja Ishrat, Super Checker Nasir Yousaf, and Draftsmen Yasir Arafat and Mannan Ahmed, and handed it the 100 files.
What the team found
Field inspections turned up parking violations, buildings with no setbacks, and departures from approved plans. Some commercial buildings were finished before the Board had approved the plans submitted for them. Others went up with no plans whatever, in what the report calls extensive breaches of the Board’s building codes.
The inspectors responsible, it would seem, said nothing. The Tribune reported that they allegedly stayed deliberately silent, letting the work finish and costing the Board millions of rupees in plan-approval fees it never collected. No exact figure was given.
Who was removed
After the team reported, the Board suspended Bilal Gujjar of Ward 9, Bilal Raza of Ward 8, Bilal Ahmed of Ward 5 and Imran Bhatti of Ward 10, all found involved in corruption and corrupt practices. A fifth inspector, Muhammad Sadaqat, was dismissed from service.
The Land Branch drew notice as well. The inquiry found it had been helping field staff with the illegal construction. Once a composition fee was fixed on a file, the file was allegedly left pending while the building was completed. All Land Branch staff have been posted there for a long time, and their alleged collusion with Building Control field staff surfaced during the team’s work.
Rashid has since enforced a zero-tolerance policy on illegal construction. The team has been told to carry on, checking commercial construction in all 10 wards against the building bylaws and codes and reporting what it finds to the competent authority.
