LAHORE: The management of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) plans to focus on improving the environment, making Punjab’s capital a clean, green, sustainable, and livable city until 2034.

It also wants to make efforts to change the image of the organisation by improving service delivery, completing the digitization of records, and ensuring a paperless working environment in a bid to serve the public at large in a friendly manner.

“I don’t want LDA to be known as an organisation making roads or bridges alone in Lahore. I want this organisation to be recognised as making Lahore a sustainable, green, clean, environment-friendly, and livable city under a 10-year plan I envision,” LDA Director General Tahir Farooq said while listing his priorities to take the organisation towards a most-needed objective/goal.

“Though roads and bridges are also the need of this city, my focus would be on improving the environment of the city,” he added while talking to Dawn on Thursday.

Mr Farooq said his focus would also ensure introducing a cycling culture, dedicated tracks, footpaths for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists with the availability of green areas on both sides of the roads. According to him, encroachments, the display of signboards, and publicity material on roads, shops, public spots, green belts, and other places are not only damaging the city’s aesthetics but also causing several environment-related issues.

“Lahore should have clean drinking water for all, as it is essential for the health of the people. For this, the LDA can play a vital role,” he said. It may be mentioned that the primary contributors to air pollution in Lahore include vehicle and industrial emissions, smoke from brick kilns, burning of crop residue and general waste, and dust from construction sites. Deforestation for infrastructure development, such as new roads and buildings, also plays a significant role.

To a question, the DG said besides the removal of encroachments, signboards etc, the LDA would ensure effective traffic engineering to control traffic congestion in busy areas of Lahore.

“We have assigned Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning Agency (Tepa) — a subsidiary of LDA — to leave no stone unturned in this regard,” he maintained.

To another question about mega transport infrastructure projects, Blue Line and Purple Line, he said he would get a briefing on these projects soon and find out ways to execute these mega schemes.

“I know these are very important projects in terms of state-of-the-art transport facilities for the people of Lahore,” he said, adding that the shifting of the record related to LDA-owned housing schemes and other departments is also among one of his priorities. On the other hand, the Tepa on Thursday launched a city-wide operation against illegally displayed signboards in the Punjab capital.

According to official sources, the teams removed a number of signboards in various markets, roads, and prominent places. In the first phase, Tepa teams removed illegal signboards from several spots of Jail Road, MM Alam Road, Hali Road, Noor Jahan Road, Liberty Market Roundabout, and Mahmood Kasuri Road.

On the other hand, the LDA management held an important meeting the Town Planning Wing. In the meeting, chief town planners 1 and 2 gave detailed briefings about the working of the wing.

“The IT-based reforms in the Town Planning Wing are inevitable. In this way, a new era of information technology will be introduced in LDA,” DG Farooq said while presiding over the meeting. He sought installation of the signboards on all under-construction approved buildings so that all should know about details related to the approval of the building plan. He was of the view that there should be no debris on the under construction properties in LDA controlled area.

“All under-construction properties should be geo-tagged. Moreover, we must devise an action plan based on concrete measures to prevent illegal commercialization and illegal construction,” he sought. He said that all directors of town planning should also improve revenue generation by achieving their targets before the end of the financial year.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2024