RAWALPINDI, May 5: Rawal Town Administrator Saif Anwar Jappa has entrusted the responsibility of razing illegal structures in 46 union councils of the city to officials who had been reprimanded for turning a blind eye to them in the past.

The administrator has formed a special six-member demolition squad after he found that more than 38 commercial buildings had been constructed without the approval of the civic body and gave supervisory role to the building inspector Malik Saleem Naz, who had previously been served show-cause notice for ignoring illegal buildings.

Similarly, another building inspector Abdul Qayyum Khan was made head of the six-member squad whose five-year service had been forfeited by the administrator some two months back on the same charges.

The increasing trend of construction of buildings without the approval of Rawal Town Municipal Administration (RTMA) forced the administrator to form the special squad.

He suspended two building inspectors - Sajjad Shah and Mohammad Afzaal - for alleged corruption as they allowed the owners of domestic units to construct commercial buildings without getting approval of the building plan from the RTMA.

The administrator issued show-cause notices to Town Officer Regulation Tauseef Ahmed Malik and two building inspectors - Tariq Yousuf and Saleem Naz - on the same charges. He asked them to clear their position otherwise he would send recommendations to the Punjab secretary local government to take departmental action against them.

“We have no other option but to appoint the officials of the building department to look after the function of special demolition squad,” said Mr Saif Anwar Jappa, when Dawn reminded him that Saleem Naz and Abdul Qayyum were facing corruption charges.

“The squad will not work independently as Town Municipal Officer (TMO) and Administrator will provide them lists and they will act,” he explained.

He said that the sector-wise list of illegal structure would be prepared on weekly basis for prompt action without any discrimination. “The newly formed squad is an effort to correct the wrong and improve the income of the RTMA,” he said.

“For the first time, the building plan fee target reached Rs23.5 million due to daily inspection of the area,” he said and added that the by the end of this fiscal year, the RTMA would earn Rs30 million under this head.  Meanwhile, while addressing the RTMA officials at Jinnah Hall, Rawal Town’s new Town Municipal Officer (TMO) Ch Liaquat Ali warned the RTMA officials to improve their working as he would not tolerate wrongdoings.  He said that the RTMA offices would soon be shifted to new building and the present building would be rented out to meet the expenses of the town administration. He said that the service board would take up the promotion cases of the officials.