KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has directed the Association of Builders and Developers (ABAD) to ensure display of SBCA barcode-based approval board at their under-construction buildings so that the people and the government could differentiate between legal and illegal structures.

He took this decision at a meeting held with a delegation of ABAD led by its chairman Mohsin Sheikhani at the Chief Minister's House here. The chief minister said that a large number of illegal buildings have emerged in the city against which ABAD has to cooperate with the government because we are going to take strict action against them.

He decided that ABAD members would display a board of SBCA approval with barcodes on their under-construction buildings. The people through their mobile applications would be able to scan the barcode and ascertain whether the building was legal or illegal, he said and added it would also be easy for the government to differentiate between legal and illegal structures so that action could be taken accordingly.

Shah directed the SBCA to issue barcodes to the old buildings. The builders told the chief minister that the approvals of their projects were pending with SBCA from 2011. At this, the chief minister directed SBCA to approve the layout plans if they meet their required formalities, otherwise return them to the concerned builders/applicants so that they could file their requests afresh.

"What is the logic of keeping applications in pending for a long time," he said. The ABAD delegation told the chief minister that the transfer of title in Hawkesbay scheme was still pending with the Board of Revenue. The chief minister directed the senior member board of revenue to address the grievances of the builders and get the titles transferred.

ABAD offered the Sindh government to work with them on PPP mode to launch low-cost housing projects in the city. The chief minister, accepting the offer, issued a directive to the local government department to float a summary for the cabinet and suggest ways and means so that low cost-housing projects could be initiated for the poor and low-paid workers.

The ABAD delegation also took up the issue of EPA clearances for their new projects for which the chief minister directed his advisor on environment Murtaza Wahab to sit with the ABAD delegation and resolve all their issues. He also asked him to simplify the EPA approval procedures.

The meeting was also attended among others by Labour Minister Saeed Ghani and Minister for Local Government Nasir Shah. COVID-19 CLAIMS FOUR MORE LIVES: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in a statement issued from the CM House said that four more patients of the coronavirus in Sindh lost their lives and 242 others contracted the virus.

Shah said that four more patients lost their lives while struggling against COVID-19. He said that 16,976 samples were tested against which 242 new cases emerged. He added that so far 1,307,753 tests had been conducted which diagnosed 135,488 patients, of them 95.5 percent or 129,396 have been cured, including 295 overnight. Murad Ali Shah said that currently 3,611 patients were under treatment.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020