Islamabad: Midas touch for ‘rich’ officers of ‘poor’ CDA

[Naveed Yaseen]

Mobarik A. Virk
The CDA has acquired the Midas touch. Everyone who touches this sacred reservoir of political and financial power turns into a millionaire overnight. The latest beneficiaries are 32 officers who are not even employees of the CDA but came on deputation, and have been allotted residential plots, each worth millions of rupees, in the posh Sector I-8.

CDA Member (Estate) Brigadier ® Asad Munir, when contacted, confirmed to ‘The News’ that this allotment of plots to the officers working on deputation in 2007 was done but it was only a ‘one time’ move.

There is a deliberate confusion about whether the Supreme Court of Pakistan allowed deputationists to get these plots, but certainly rules were bent as ‘The News’ investigation reveals.

“There was a provision in the law to allot those plots to officers working on deputation in the CDA as well. However, now the new officers joining the authority on deputation basis will not be entitled for allotment of residential plots against any length of service which they serve in the authority,” Brigadier ® Asad Munir said.

Sources in the CDA said that the move to allot residential plots to deputationists was strongly opposed and even the Ministry of Interior, which was the parent ministry governing the affairs of the CDA till recently before it was reverted to the Cabinet Division, had turned down the proposal at the time.

According to the laid down rules of the authority, an employee of the CDA becomes eligible for allotment of a residential plot only after completing at least 10 years of service in the CDA and that too through a ballot held from time to time.

But CDA Director Lands and Rehabilitation Khalid Mahmood Mirza told ‘The News’ that the officers on deputation were also treated as ‘regular employees’ of the civic body.

He said that in 2005 the CDA Board amended this rule to accommodate the officers on deputation basis when they changed the definition of ‘Employee’ by inserting words ‘including deputationists’ in the ‘Land Disposal Regulations’ of the CDA. The SRO (Statutory Regulatory Order) was issued in July 2005. It was interesting that all the members of the CDA Board, including the chairman, who took the decision, were working on deputation basis.

In July 2006, the ex-interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who was the ‘minister in-charge’ of the CDA, in his decision to allot plots to the CDA employees, working in BPS-1 to BPS-16, clearly wrote to the CDA that the plots should be allotted to the CDA employees except those working on deputation basis.

However CDA Director Lands & Rehabilitation Khalid Mahmood Mirza told ‘The News’ that the ex-interior minister later withdrew his orders and allowed such allotment to the deputationists.

“He was compelled to do that because otherwise he would have faced a contempt of court notice as his orders were in violation of the orders passed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, allowing allotment of plots to the officers working on deputation basis in the CDA,” the director claimed.

However, a source in the Ministry of Interior said that the former minister never withdrew his orders concerning allotment of plots to the officers working on deputation basis.

Sources in the Directorate of Estate Management told ‘The News’ that it was also pointed out that in accordance with the decision by the Supreme Court of Pakistan the officers serving in the CDA on deputation basis were not eligible for allotment of plots.

However, the members of the CDA Board, all of whom are beneficiary of this scheme, amended CDA’s ‘Land Disposal Policy’ to make sure that the officers/officials joining the authority on deputation should enjoy the benefit of allotment of residential plots as well.

“These officials who have been allotted these residential plots in Sector I-8 are well aware that they have twisted the rules and the situation can turn against them any time if somebody in the concerned quarters took up the matter. So, many of them have already sold these plots allotted to them by the CDA under this scheme,” the sources in the Estate Management Directorate said. The officers who have benefited from this generosity of the authority include former CDA chairman Kamran Lashari, plot no. 93-A, Sector I-8/3, (one kanal); Member Finance Kamran Qureshi, plot no. 22-A, Sector I-8/2, (one kanal); ex-member administration Shaukat Ali Mohmand, 22-B, Sector I-8/2 (one kanal); ex-member engineering, Brigadier ® Syed Ghulam Akbar Bukhari, plot no. 22-C, Sector I-8/2, (one kanal); ex-member planning and design, Brigadier Nusratullah, plot no. 22-D, Sector I-8/2; (one kanal); Member Estate Brigadier ® Asad Munir, plot no. 191, Sector I-8/3; (one kanal); director estate management-I (now CDA Chairman) Flt-Lt ® Tariq Mahmood Khan, plot no. 906, I-8/4; DFA-I Mumtaz Ali Bhatti, plot no. 417-C, I-8/2; Director Estate Management-II Khalid Mahmood Mirza, plot no. 924A, Sector I-8/3; Director Project Management Office Dr Faisal Malik Awan, plot no. 417-B, Sector I-8/2; ex-director staff Imran Nasir Khan, plot no. 706, Sector I-8/2; ex-director municipal administration (DMA) Momin Agha, plot no. 843, Sector I-8/4; Director Parks Malik Abid Mehmood, plot no. 659, Sector I-8/2; Medical Officer Dr Nazir Ahmed Sohito, plot no. 814, Sector I-8/4; ex-deputy commissioner CDA Sajjad Hussain Shah, plot no. 918, Sector I-8/4; Deputy Director Saeed Akhtar Cheema, plot no. 839; Sector I-8/4; Accounts Officer Chaudhry Mohammad Younis, plot no. 729, Sector I-8/2; Deputy Director Public Relations, Mrs Shehwar Syed, plot no. 597, Sector I-8/2; Medical Officer Dr Bushra Begum, Sector I-8; Director Zoo Raja Mohammad Javed, Sector I-8; ex-deputy director (presently Minister in NWFP Cabinet) Sher Azam Wazir, Sector I-8; Deputy Director Mohammad Iqbal, plot no. 1018, Sector I-8/4; Accounts Officer Noor Khan, plot no. 912, Sector I-8/4; ex-senior special magistrate Malik Tariq Rahim Haidri, plot no. 517-C, Sector I-8/2; Senior Special Magistrate Saqib Majeed Malik, plot no. 820, Sector I-8/2; Assistant Director Mansoor Ahmed Pirzada, plot no. 992, Sector I-8/4; ex-assistant director Aurangzeb Ashraf Awan, plot no. 1029, Sector I-8/4; Inspector Akhtar Hayat, plot no. 457-L, Sector I-8/3; Assistant Director Raja Zahid Hussain, plot no. 502, Sector I-8/2, ex-Admn. Officer (now Assistant Director) Khizer Hayat Satti, plot no. 580, Sector I-8/2; Sub-Inspector Hameedul Haq, plot no. 724, Sector I-8/2, and Sub-Inspector Mohammad Niaz Khan, plot no. 576, Sector I-8/2.

According to the ‘Property Dealers’ operating in the federal capital, the market value of these plots ranged from Rs15 million on the lower side and Rs30 million on the higher side.

“All these plots are located in the posh I-8 Sector, which is widely referred to as the ‘Bureaucrats Sector’ because most of the top ranking government officers including the federal secretaries have got residential plots allotted in this sector on their retirement. Not only that the retired top government officials are residing here but the senior serving officers also live in this sector which makes it an ‘exclusive and well maintained’ sector of the federal capital. As such the cost of plots in this sector is comparatively higher than the other sectors of Islamabad,” a property dealer told ‘The News’.

Some of the officers who have benefited from this generous policy of the CDA towards the officers joining the authority on deputation for a limited time period have received these plots with hardly one year served in the CDA.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=151390