ISLAMABAD: The real estate consultants and officials of the planning wing of the civic body considered the Islamabad Mayor’s statement to amend building control bylaws as a move to benefit property giants and builders of the city. They also raised their concerns regarding irreparable implications attached with the said decision. Sharing their expert opinions, the senior officials of the Planning Wing of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) briefed Daily Times that relaxation in the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) by excluding the circulation area would create several negative implications. Firstly, the said relaxation is not aligned with the already laid down services i.e. water and sewerage. If the Authority relaxed its rules it would help builders to construct more accommodation and commercial space on their plots. The availability of more residential and accommodation space in high rise buildings would adjust an extra population within their premises. This extra population would need extra services such as water and sewerage, but the current structure of these facilities is not fully capable to overcome this burden as it was planned and laid down as per previous planning parameters. Secondly, the construction of high rise buildings would also create the problems of delivery of utilities i.e. electricity, Sui gas etc. The high rise buildings would have also have a high demand for electricity and ultimately it would become another problem as in the case of Centaurus when NEPRA had objected over the provision of electricity connection. The third and most important implication of high rise buildings is traffic management as the current road infrastructure has failed to afford the burden of huge traffic around the high rise buildings. The shortage of parking space is another dilemma of high rise buildings as for instance at Centaurus where the mega mall is using the CDA land as a parking lot. On the other side, the real estate consultants are of the view that principally there is no need to change the building control byelaws as the builders are already earning a huge profit by selling the CDA’s auctioned plots in the open market. They argued that the omission of the circulation area from the total FAR is meant to add 35 to 40 per cent profit to real-estate investors and ultimately it would give a benefit of billions of rupees to the property giants. A property consultant, while giving market comparison said: “If the CDA excludes the circulation area from the total cover area then the three upper floors of Safa Gold Mall would also be regularised, which were constructed in violation of the current building byelaws.” He elaborated further: “The said shopping mall has 16 shops on a single floor and each shop has a market price of around 25 million rupees.” He further said: “By relaxing the rules and regulations only the said shopping mall would take a benefit of 1.2 billion rupees as it has three illegal floors.” Safa Mall is one example and several others would also take benefit of the said change in the building byelaws as signalled by the Mayor and the Chairman CDA, Shaikh Ansar Aziz. The mayor while responding to journalists in a media briefing at F-6 last Friday said: “The building control byelaws would be modified with the consultation of all the stakeholders to facilitate the construction of skyscrapers in the city.” The mayor was of the view that the high rise buildings would add further beauty to the federal capital.