SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) has start­ed crack­ing down on er­rant busi­ness peo­ple who con­struct­ed build­ings or had added an­nex­es to ex­ist­ing struc­tures with­out nec­es­sary ap­provals. The bor­ough pub­lished a list of 50 busi­ness peo­ple and in­di­vid­u­als in the dai­ly news­pa­pers as hav­ing "unau­tho­rised struc­tures or build­ings." Ash­mead Mo­hammed, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the cor­po­ra­tion, said the bor­ough was act­ing with­in the law, pur­suant to Sec­tions 159 and 161 of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act No 21 of 1990. The no­tice read: "Pur­suant to Sec­tion 161, the own­er or agents of the prop­er­ty must ap­pear at the cor­po­ra­tion's of­fices with­in sev­en days of the pub­li­ca­tion and pro­vide good and suf­fi­cient cause why such build­ing should not be re­moved, al­tered or pulled down.

"In de­fault, the cor­po­ra­tion would in­voke the pow­ers giv­en to it un­der the act and pull and or re­move the struc­tures. Among the prop­er­ties list­ed in the no­tice were a car park at Cen­tre City Mall, Bhag­wans­ingh's Hard­ware Ltd, sev­er­al prop­er­ties at Price Plaza, in­clud­ing Su­per­Pharm, Ex­cel­lent Stores Ltd, Mi­cles, Piz­za Hut, Muizneiks Ar­chi­tects Ltd. Oth­er busi­ness peo­ple list­ed as hav­ing unau­tho­rised struc­tures or build­ings were Hari­dath Sankar of Sangeet's Bar, Fer­oze Khan of Su­per Qual­i­ty, Samaan In­vest­ments Ltd (Reza Mo­hammed), Shamshad Ali of Price Club Su­per­mar­kets, Rad­i­ca Trad­ing and Suzanne Jankie of In­dar's Fast Food. May­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar said the bor­ough gave the "go-ahead" to many of the own­ers of some of the men­tioned build­ings with the promise that they would lat­er pro­vide the cor­po­ra­tion with the ap­proved plans from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore they start­ed com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions.

Nages­sar said some of the own­ers went ahead in an "ar­ro­gant man­ner" and nev­er in­formed the bor­ough or pre­sent­ed ap­proved plans. Nages­sar said he would be en­sur­ing that build­ing codes are ad­hered to. He said unau­tho­rised struc­tures had been pop­ping up and "some busi­ness­men even had the gall to ex­tend their busi­ness­es on­to the pub­lic road." Cit­ing an ex­am­ple, Nages­sar said the bor­ough had start­ed re­claim­ing the road re­serve at Ram­saran Street. He said a 20-foot-wide space was snatched by busi­ness­men. Some paved the area as car parks while oth­ers erect­ed fences on the road­way. Nages­sar said they were no­ti­fied by the bor­ough and recla­ma­tion works had since start­ed. He said the bor­ough would not tol­er­ate any non­sense from busi­ness peo­ple who want­ed to breach the build­ing codes.