Representational image. PHOTO: REUTERS
In this regard, the Sindh planning and development (P&D) department has undertaken the exercise of developing master plans for 15 districts of the province after notifying the same for Karachi and Sukkur recently.
At a marathon consultation workshop, divided into five sessions for as many districts of Hyderabad division, in Hyderabad on Thursday the officials shared details of the tentative master plans. A team of the directorate of urban policy and strategic planning and EA Consulting (Pvt) Ltd briefed the officials of various government departments of Dadu, Jamshoro, Tando Muhammad Khan, Matiari and Tando Allahyar districts.
The directorate's Deputy Director Zulfiqar Ali said that the team was preparing master plans for 15 towns of 14 districts of Hyderabad, Shaheed Benazirabad and Mirpurkhas divisions. One district headquarters town from each of the district has been selected for the plans except Tharparkar whose two towns, Mithi and Islamkot, have been included. Each district in Sindh has at least three to four semi-urban or semi-rural towns, but the project has selected only one town from each district.
Strangely, Hyderabad district is not part of the exercise. "Hyderabad's master plan was prepared in 2007 and its current status is neither approved nor rejected," he said. Hyderabad's plan was prepared when Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Deputy Convener Kunwar Naveed Jamil was the city Nazim. Ali said the plan appeared out-dated and needed revision.
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In the second phase of the project, the plans will be prepared for the six remaining districts of Sukkur and Larkana divisions. The master plans are also divided into two phases. The first phase is for five years and the second contains planning for two decades, till 2037.
During the five years, the rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure will be carried out. The head of urban planning of EA Consulting (Pvt) Ltd, Masoodul Hasan Jafri, said, "The downtown rehabilitation will be done with minimal dislocation".
He added that people cannot be uprooted from their abodes to expand the roads. He, however, expressed hope that the residents of the downtown will likely be shifted to new housing societies which will offer them better housing and related facilities.
Master plan
The plan allocates land for the future housing, commercial projects, government offices, education, health, trade, industry, recreation, religious places, for water, sewage and solid waste treatment and disposal, infrastructure to facilitate transportation, like road and rail, and graveyards, among other purposes. It also provides an immediate action plan for rehabilitation of existing roads, water supply and drainage infrastructure.
However, the stakeholders who attended the meeting were not informed about how many acres of land in each of the five districts will be required to implement the master plan. The team was also silent about the manner in which the land for the expansion will be purchased from the private landowners as well as from the provincial government.
The team also could not share how many acres will be set aside for each of the component sectors. Though Jafri claimed that they have done land use analysis of all the towns, the details were unavailable.
A participant suggested that the provincial government should complete the land acquisition for implementation of the plan as soon as it is approved and notified. He contended that with the passage of time the value of land will increase and the government will end up spending a far higher sum of money to purchase the land.
Responding to the suggestion, Jafri said that if the provincial government opted to purchase all the land required for the plan in the initial years of implementation, it will not be left with enough funds to finance the on-going and new development projects.
Deficiencies and omissions
An official of Sui Southern Gas Company Limited (SSGC) pointed out that the master plan lacked mention of the supply of gas and electricity utilities. Jafri replied that they wrote to the SSGC in this regard, but they did not get the required information. The company's official, however, claimed that the company has not received any communication either from the consultants or the P&D department.
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The SSGC's official, while pointing out that plan was silent over the subject of 'road height', told that until a few decades ago the gas pipelines lay three feet below the road surface in Tando Allahyar district. "Now, due to the addition of one layer of a road after another, during repair and maintenance works, the gas pipelines have been buried 10 to 12 feet deep".
P&D Assistant Director Sono Khan Chandio identified another problem relating to the road level - the damage caused to the structure and value of the residential and commercial properties. He said the people concerned with the ever increasing road level build the ramps for their car porches up to four feet high and by doing so they end up encroaching upon several feet into the roads.
Assistant professor of the department of city and regional planning (CRP), Dr Irfan Ahmed Memon, suggested that the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) regarding low-cost housing should also be included in the master plans.
"You are planning the cities, but you aren't giving shape to the cities," noted CRP Assistant Professor Fahad Shaikh. He also pointed out that the master plan appeared deficient about the details of the service roads, environment and commercial street plans.
The additional deputy commissioner of Matiari district opposed the location of the landfill site in the plan which he said were only around two kilometres away from the town.
He suggested that the site should be relocated at least 10km away. An education officer pointed out that no sports grounds have been included in the master plan.
The inter-town public transport also does not appear to be a part of the plan. Its absence attracted greater concern in the session of Jamshoro district. Pointing to the lack of geographical contiguity among Jamshoro, Kotri and Bolhari towns, unlike the towns in the other districts, the participants emphasised on the need to include mass transit in the plan.
Suggestions
An additional deputy commissioner asked the P&D department to convince the provincial government to ban the change of land use from agriculture to residential or residential to commercial. "The influential builders get approval for conversion of land from a union council and later they approach us for rest of the formalities".
Responding to a query, Jafri said that tourism development was not completely included in the plan. "Who will promote tourism? The Sindh tourism department is not even planning for the sites which without a doubt offer huge revenue potential," he lamented.
Syed Babur Ali of EA Consulting said that the concept of urban forestry, as being practised by some non-governmental organisations in Karachi, would be introduced to Jamshoro.
The mountainous part of Jamshoro will be developed for the residential and commercial schemes while the land along the Indus River and KB feeder canal will be kept solely for agricultural purposes. He argued that at present there were more new housing schemes than the housing demand in the district.
He said that uncontrolled development had led to the establishment of several housing colonies along the bypass roads which create traffic congestion. "The bypass roads are meant to provide an expressway to the vehicles by avoiding their passage from the urban settled areas. The expansion of the housing society on the bypass roads kills their purpose," he said. He added that the master plans will ban future construction of housing schemes on the bypass roads.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 24th, 2019.
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