RAWALPINDI, May 4: Thousands of people planning to construct houses in Murree town have been running from pillar to post to get approval of building plans after Punjab government declared the hilly area as environment sensitive.

Getting a building map is no doubt a difficult task in the country but Murree is perhaps the only area where one has to obtain no-objection certificates from a large number of government offices besides visiting Lahore for obtaining approval from the Environment Protection Agency (Punjab-EPA).

Applications for constructing houses in Murree have piled up with the authorities for the last three years without any progress despite the fact that Murree Improvement Trust (MIT) has requested the provincial government to relax rules.

People who had bought plots in the autonomous MIT during the previous government now fear that their investments will be at stake in case the authorities do not allow them to construct houses.

“We have invested millions in buying plots in Murree but the government has made the procedure so complicated that it is almost impossible to get a house built there. We are really worried and concerned about the situation,” said Qadeer Mughal, an applicant.

The building plan approval committee headed by the DCO with members including station commander Rawalpindi and representatives from the forest department, soil conservation department, EPA-Punjab etc., has been mandated to approve building plans for the resort town.

Punjab-EPA charges Rs30,000 for issuing an NOC; however, so far not a single NOC has been issued despite receiving fees from the applicants.

Things would have been easy for the applicants had the local environment office authorised to issue NOC rather than sending the applicants to Lahore.

“Our office only inspects the sites while the final authority to grant NOC is EPA-Punjab,” District Officer Environment Shaukat Hayat told Dawn.

Secretary MIT Dr Omar Jehangir, who is also assistant commissioner Murree, told this reporter that the Punjab government had been requested to relax rules about building plans as people had been waiting for long to construct their houses, adding the situation would improve soon.

Zameer Najam, another applicant, complained that he had obtained NOC from every department but the environment authorities were sitting on his application for the last three years.