The House of Representatives Committee on Urban and Regional Planning, has reiterated the need for adequate planning of urban cities, saying doing so will help address insecurity and other challenges.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Awaji-Inombek Abiante in his address during the inaugural meeting of the panel Thursday, lamented that there have been breaches of the original plans of many urban cities.
“If our cities are properly developed, well planned, issues of disasters, issues of emergencies would be reduced. Issues of identifications would be improved because persons can be tracked to the very last location that they are.
“But what we find, what we have, are cities lacking the very basic, relative planning for development.
“In areas where there has been semblance of planning, development has not been according to plans. Areas where development have reached, there have been cases of several distortions. There have been cases of conversions. Areas are designated as residential but people convert them to be commercial or even industrial. It negates, and would continue to negate the essence of planning and urban development.”
The lawmaker added that slums have continued to spring up because of the challenges.
“It would be in our place to bring our experiences and knowledge to bear, to support government, to see how these can be redeveloped and upgraded beyond what they are today as slums,” he said..”