Muhammad Ahmed Waheed President, Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President and Saif ur Rahman Khan Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry has called upon the CDA to form a task force for undertaking development works in local markets on priority basis as due to lack of development, business activities were suffering in the federal capital.
They said that CDA was responsible to do development works in Islamabad and the civic body should perform this role more effectively. They also appealed to the Special Assistant to PM on CDA Affairs Ali Nawaz Awan to use his influence and push CDA for early start of development works in local markets.
They said that for the last 4 years, CDA has not done any major development work in any market of Islamabad on the pretext of insufficient funds. However, the civic body has made manifold increase in property tax and other charges in additional to earning billions of rupees from auction of plots that should be used on welfare works. They said that markets needed better sanitation, repair of footpaths, availability of car parking facility and other required facilities as absence of these facilities was increasing problems of traders. They said that CDA had planned to construct multi-storey parking in markets, but so progress was made to this effect so far. They said that parking issue has aggravated, especially in Blue Area, sector F-6, F-10 and Karachi Company as there was no better space in these business areas for car parking. They said that if CDA did not construct parking areas in markets, parking issue would become more serious in future. Therefore, the civic body should accelerate efforts to improve business infrastructure for facilitating the growth of business activities.