Demolish illegal buildings, China tells African States
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has advised African countries grappling with illegal buildings on undesignated land to demolish them.
An official from the housing and urban rural development bureau in Fujian Province, Wen Xiaoyong, told a group of visiting Africans from Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi and Nigeria on Monday that China does not compromise on illegal construction of buildings or tolerate strange looking structures.
He told the group attending a 2016 three-week seminar on economic development and planning analysis of cities and towns for African countries that planning of urban and rural areas ensures proper use of land.
Responding to concerns that most African countries have suffered encroachment of land and erections of unplanned housing projects, Wen said while China’s planning and designing is a success story, the country also encountered similar challenges in the past, but has managed to regulate the situation.
“Just last year alone, we demolished about 50 million square metres of illegal buildings. We now have permission for locations as the legal basis for the urban and rural planning department to audit the construction project site.
“We also have a licence for construction land use that helps to prove that a given land is in accordance with the demands of urban and rural planning,” he said.
According to PRC’s Urban and Rural Planning Law, urban and rural planning promotes a comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of the economy and society as well as improve living standards of people.
Wen observed that proper implementation of existing laws to protect land accounts for 70 percent of a successful road map while the actual planning takes about 30 percent.
“Land is subjected to high level scrutiny and inspection by qualified personnel as well as high tech satellite monitoring in dealing with unscrupulous dealings,” he said.
Member of expert committee on China’s urbanisation of housing construction at Fujian Academy of Social Sciences, Professor Yan Zheng, said the country’s urbanisation has grown from 18 percent in 1978 to 54.7 percent in 2014.
He said China has 250 million workers from rural areas who have migrated to towns and cities and is expected to have another 250 million in cities in 30 years. n
Pray tell, why should the Chinese tell us to demolish our buildings? I suspect they want their nationals to build on those plots!
Joking aside, we don’t need the Chinese to be telling us these things. It’s pretty obvious that these buildings aught to be demolished.
A municipality is not supposed to intervene into private property without giving the owners an equivalent compensation.
If there is an article dealing about illegal buldings, why showing a picture of a trading house in the town centre? It is illegal? No.
Does the Chinese people what to tell African Countries that It is good to displace the poor from their townships? If bulldozers tear down Ndirande or mbayani houses – who Is expected to be happy then? Its people who become even more poor plus homeless?
Every municipality is supposed to give space to the people and not taking it away from them. If not, it is a failed urban planning strategy.
The City of Blantyre is unable to even maintain publice squares, parks, and its institutions. We don’t even need to mention the decline of organized public transport or the missing and broken street lights.
It might look like the people in the town hall have a need to express their power in harming other peoples rights instead of maintaining the basic services of a functioning city.
I hope so much that all the owner of the red crossed houses come up with massive resistance against its demolition. If they had money, they would have been renovated, extended or replaced their structures with better ones already!
As a next step, if the City of Blantyre wants to show stengh, they have to come up with
– a social housing construction programme
– care about proper market buildings (replacing the agglomeration of temporary huts)
– reintroduce a reliable bus and train service system
– Improving street lighs and therefore the security
– Buildings proper bus depots in Blantyre and Limbe
– and maintain green spaces and trees for the air quality and as recreation areas
after being done with that
The municipality can start suggesting renovations and replacements of private buildings.