Debating development: ‘City’s elected leaders have no say in LDA affairs’

LAHORE:

The Lahore Development Authority is answerable only to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The city’s newly-elected local government representatives will have no authority over the LDA’s affairs, Advocate Waqqas Mir said on Monday night.

He was speaking at a quarterly debate organised by the Debates and Recitation Society (DRUMS) at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) on the LDA’s development programme for the city.



Besides Mir, Architects Kamil Khan Mumtaz and Hala Bashir spoke in support of the motion: This House Believes that the Lahore Development Programme Should Be Shut Down. Former Lahore Transport Company (LTC) chairman Khwaja Ahmed Hassaan, LDA Chief Engineer Israr Shah and Mass Transit Authority General Manager (Operations) Ozair Shah spoke against the motion.

Mir said that as an executive agency not accountable to the city’s elected representatives the LDA should not set the development agenda on its own. “This will be a mockery of democracy,” he said. The provincial government would be doing a disservice to the public if it did not let the elected local leaders take such decisions, he said.

MTA GM Ozair Shah said Mir’s concerns were well founded. He asked the proposition party to participate in deliberations for the city’s next master plan once the process was started.

He said the MTA had decided to keep routes of public transport facilities flexible so that they could be altered if needed.



Earlier, Kamil Khan Mumtaz said that the financial gain was the only concern behind the government’s vision for infrastructure development in the city. He said that by constructing signal-free corridors the government was sending out a message that it did not care about pedestrians. He said the construction of the Orange Line Metro Train would affect the view of around 30 historic sites in the city and result in relocation of thousands of households. He said lack of a coherent vision had led to unchecked growth in the city. “Around 90 per cent area in the city is low-density and is affordable only for the rich. The remaining 10 per cent area houses around 70 per cent of the residents,” he said.

Khwaja Hassaan said a government could not survive without paying attention to city’s development needs.

He said the government was replicating best public transport models from across the world in the mass transit system under development for the city.

He said around 140,000 people used the metro bus service every day.



Hassaan was interrupted by a member of the proposition party and asked if the government wasn’t being arrogant in defining the city’s development vision on its own, without any input from the public. “I don’t think there is a need to ask the question. We know what people want. Thousands of people are traveling on the metro bus every day. It’s clear what the people want,” he said.

Hassaan also dismissed the suggestion that any historic monument would be harmed on account of the Metro Train project.

To a question from the audience on the financial arrangements with the Chinese government, he said. The Chinese were extending a soft loan for the project.

Hala Bashir took the floor after Hassaan. “We’re not against development projects. We oppose the government’s development model. It is unsustainable,” she said.

She said public transport projects should be carried out after comprehensive debates. She said the LDA should consider vertical development of the city which was the norm in many major cities of the world.

LDA Chief Engineer Israr Saeed said the authority picked its development schemes based on public demand. He said the people could use their right to vote to tell governments whether or not they approved of their policies. “They certainly like the metro bus service. There is no reason to assume that they won’t like the metro train project,” he said.

Shah assured the proposition party that representatives of the civil society would be taken into confidence before the launch of major development schemes in future. Shah and Hassaan left the hall on the conclusion of the former’s arguments. The proposition party won the debate based in terms of the audience poll (taken by secret ballot).

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th,  2015.