Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Emergency and Disaster Management Directorate (E&DM) of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is deprived of its vehicles since 2011, while, the Additional Director E&DM wrote a letter to the administration of civic body to take the control of said vehicles.

According to details, it was requested in a letter written by the Additional Director E&DM Ammad ud Deen to the Director Administration of the CDA that the administration of the CDA should facilitate the Emergency Audit and Prevention Wing by allocating five vehicles, which were approved by the CDA Board in its meeting held in March 2011.

The letter further stated that the said vehicles were approved by the CDA Board to implement the standards for fire prevention and life safety across the federal capital, but they were not handed over so far. The absence of these vehicles is badly affecting the day to day routine of concerned formations as currently an Assistant Director, In-charges of Industrial Area, Commercial Area, Civil domain and In-charge of E&M are working without official vehicles.

All these officers are supposed to work in field, but they are deprived from their official vehicles besides the approval of CDA board. The E&DM Directorate was established in 2008 in the aftermath of 2005 earthquake and Marriott fire incident realizing the increasing importance of a fully equipped, pro-active and fast disaster mitigation and response unit of trained and motivated men and women.

They said directorate is an important formation of the civic body as per its mandate, but it has been neglected by the high ups of the authority as implementation of Fire and Life Safety Regulations are not in the priority list of the top management of CDA.

A source inside the Directorate of E&DM has told Daily Times that the other directorates of the civic body are not extending their active cooperation to E&DM for the implementation of fire and life safety regulations.

It was earlier reported by the Daily Times that the One Window Operation Directorate is ignoring the approved Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by not sending all the files to Building Advisory Unit of E&DM Directorate to seek a compulsory NOC before any transfer of property in the city.

Earlier, the Member Estate of the CDA had directed to the estate management directorates and the one window operation cell to send all files of the residential and commercial properties to the directorate of disaster management for obtaining a fire prevention and life safety NOC to ensure a fire free Islamabad.

The reason behind the decision was to implement the fire and safety regulations across the board i.e. existing buildings and new buildings. A large number of buildings in Islamabad were violating the said regulations as the owners failed to adopt any fire preventive measures.

In fact the directorate of E&DM is one of the most important directorate of the civic body, but due to the institutional negligence it is losing its effectiveness and unable to fulfill its functions effectively and efficiently.