Francistown Is Haphazardly Planning

Correspondent | Monday November 16, 2015 15:00

Firstly, all the beautiful bougainvillea  plants that surrounded the plot have been cut down. They provided a beautiful façade when they were in bloom. This plot is currently being levelled and paved. Upon enquiry, I was informed that the area has been designated to the youth programme for hawking and vending purposes.  While it is a noble idea to provide such vending areas, a serious question comes to mind.

Any developer, especially in the private sector who wishes to develop any area that is designated for business has to comply with certain regulations under the Building Control Act and the Town and Country planning regulations. If it is a proposal for commercial activity the developer has to provide and set aside a certain portion for public parking space/area on his valuable plot. If he does not do so then the proposal is rejected. The plan has to comply with this requirement if the project is to proceed.

Now what surprises me is that the whole of the current area being levelled and paved has always been the parking area for this plot. How is it that this parking space is being now being redeveloped into a vending area? Is it that the Council or the Government (or whoever is developing this plot) is exempted from complying with these requirements for parking? Why is the private sector required to comply with these regulations and not so for other developers?

Private developers have over the years given up their costly and valuable land in order to provide on-site parking. Yet now those very people responsible for monitoring, implementing and enforcing compliance are themselves breaking the law!!!! Some answers please. 

Another issue: Francistown has always had the area called Central Residential Area as an area for housing. Today the area is slowly being converted into offices and the like. There are now more lawyers, accountants and architects in this residential area, so much so that if one threw the proverbial stone, you would be bound to hit at least one of these guys. Council please answer this question – has the area been re-designated into a mixed use area or is this as a result of some surreptitious dealings because some greedy people see that this is the only free hold residential land that exists since pre-Independence times. 

Francistown has always been proud of its tree-planting programme to beautify the city and make it environmentally friendly. We started this programme over 30 years ago when I was still a Councillor. I don’t know what happens today because we see trees being felled left right and centre. First the new road and ‘spaghetti’ junction resulted in many trees that lined the roads being uprooted. Today we have Botswana Power Corporation cutting, chopping and uprooting many trees in the central residential area that have survived since the dawn of Independence.

I really cannot understand why these trees are being felled especially when they assist in negating the effect of the high carbon emissions worldwide. Are we not environmentally aware or sensitive?

Please can we have some answers because when we question things we hit a brick wall of silence? I wonder what the reaction would be if the property developers who have to over the years given up their valuable land to provide public parking were to take a legal class action suit against the council for allowing this development to go ahead in direct violation of the Building Control and Town and Country Planning Acts. On the other hand private developers were and are forced to comply with these Acts.

Sorry guys, but I need to ask these awkward questions because things seem to be done haphazardly nowadays and the public is neither sensitised nor informed. 

 

Iqbal Ebrahim

Former Francistown Mayor