YES it has happened before. People have constructed buildings outside designated or zoned areas of towns and cities Town and Country Planning master plans.
There are cases, for instance, where houses have been constructed under ZESCO Way leaves or the strip of land reserved in the town or city plan for the passage of ZESCO cables only, building have also been constructed on road reserves being pieces of land allowed in the master plan for the location of current or indeed future road net works.
More rampant, especially in recent times, is the construction of buildings encroaching on Zambia Railways way leaves, being strips of land reserved for laying of railway lines.
These building illegalities have all along been associated with development anarchists sometimes relying on political connections to illegally allocate land to vulnerable and unsuspecting citizens.
Sometime back these developments were somehow legalised or formalised, however, and more recently there has been less tolerance of these illegal developments and there has been a tendency to have them demolished.
Of a slightly different background is the item shown on television of a clinic funded from the Constituency Development Funds (CDF) which has been constructed on top of a water trunk main line belonging to Kafubu Water and Sewerage Company.
It is different in the sense that this reported controversial development has been constructed from government resources which resources have often attracted criticism on the way it has been applied.
It is also different in that unlike the other cases of land encroachment which are sometimes carried out in a clandestine manner, projects executed from Constituency Development Funds follow procedures with various levels of approval after satisfying a number of parameters which would include the legal status of the land to be affected by any proposed development before granting the go-ahead and this is what raises eye brows on this government project which has reportedly been constructed on a water trunk main.
In proposing and implementation of town plans for a town or city lay out make provisions to allow for the accommodation of the various and necessary services essential to daily human activities.
Town plans allow strips of land sometimes called service or sanitary lanes or way leaves to accommodate such services as water and sewer pipes, storm water drains, reserve roads, electricity and telephone cables.
The actual size of the way leave is such that works such as making new installation or maintaining or replacing existing services can be easily carried out, for instance where such works may need the use of an excavator such equipment should be easily maneuvered without causing damage to the surrounding facilities.
When these way leaves are tampered with by constructing churches, clinics or indeed any building on these pieces of land the consequences may include serious disruption of orderly and healthy urban life.
The local authorities have had a lot of functions vested in them including controlling and monitoring construction activities, trading within their areas of jurisdiction, public health matters, and activities at cemeteries, maintenance of streets and street lighting as well as buildings.
This arrangement where most functions were under one roof may have made coordination easier, however and due to poor service delivery a number of these functions have been taken away from local authorities.
The function of water supply and sanitation was one such function that was removed from local authorities through the enactment of the Water Supply and Sanitation Act in 1997.
This Act led to the creation of water utility companies that took over the responsibility of supplying water and providing sewer services to the communities in designated areas of jurisdiction, however the point to note is that local authorities are represented in the water utility companies? through the appointment of a board member, this was hopefully in recognition of the fact that activities by the newly created water utility companies would impact on the activities of local authorities and there would, therefore, be need for coordination in the execution of their respective functions.
This arrangement if followed would bring the activities of local authorities to the attention of water utility companies especially those activities which would need the input of water utility companies including plans by local authorities to open up new pieces of land for development or construction of new buildings which would require the supply of water and availability sewerage services.
When one submits an application to the local authorities to erect a building the application is circulated to various departments to ensure that all regulations are complied with before approving the application.
The information submitted to the local authority in the application to erect a building includes a location plan which indicates exactly where the new development will be located, it also includes information on the source of water supply and drainage of sewerage, in short the circulation for approval of applications to erect a building would ordinarily include an input from the relevant water utility company who in this case is Kafubu Water and Sewerage Company whose main water trunk line has been built on.
For this approval process to be meaningful it would require regular coordination between local authorities and water utility companies, it would also require that utility companies would know exactly where their water and sewer networks are? located.
This information would easily be at their “finger tips” through mapping of all routes accommodating their services and the technology is now available to locate underground cables and pipes where this information may be missing.
If indeed the clinic funded from Constituency Development Funds has been constructed on a water trunk line what then are the available long term permanent options.
The construction and layout of the affected water trunk line would not have been designed to withstand the load imposed on it by the newly constructed clinic; the weight of the clinic may also further affect the trunk line through building settlement which is always possible especially in newly constructed buildings.
The end result will be that the water pipe will crack and when this happens the clinic itself will be negatively affected to a point where it may even collapse and worse still the supply of water to the community will be adversely affected.
The other option may be to reroute the water pipe; this option will also disrupt water supply to the residents and the news item reported that such an exercise may cost in the range of K500,000.
The easiest option is to demolish the new clinic and learn to do things better next time by coordinating with all concerned parties.??Comments 0955 789960