Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The provincial capital once was famous as the city of flowers but the rapid urbanisation on agricultural lands is resulting in unplanned residential towns which maligned the beauty of the city.

Abid Kamal, Deputy Director, Bureau of Agriculture, said: “We were having a very vast agriculture land once in Peshawar, but now space is shrinking all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”. “There is no law to stop people from urbanisation on agriculture land. The government should legislate for it,” Kamal maintained, adding that the situation may lead to food issue for the province, pollution and floods as population is increasing day by day. Peshawar is one of the most affected areas of KP in terms of urbanisation. The total agriculture land in Peshawar was 109,883 acres in 2001-02, which shrank to 106,576 acres in 2013-14. Urbanisation has cost a total of 3,037 acres agricultural land, he said. Yaqoob Khan, assistant director planning, Provincial Housing Authority, said that due to non-professional approach in government departments and some influential groups, illegal housing schemes were launched, though they used to do proper survey in the past. He suggested action against private schemes which are declared illegal and unplanned in Peshawar by revising the 2001 Housing Policy.

He also suggested use of modern techniques for housing and proper planning on tehsil levels.