By Farid Sabri
Rather than taking action against the corrupt mafia of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and finalise the pending 117 departmental inquiries, CDA officials have decided to terminate 16 employees and block the salaries of 184 employees of the environmental wing on account of unauthorised absence.
Meanwhile, 76 cases involving CDA officials are pending with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal investigation Agency (FIA).
The CDA administration is known to have accommodated officers accused of corruption and having FIA, NAB or departmental inquiries but they have terminated labour which was only being paid Rs 10,000 each, which is 4,000 less than the minimum wage.
Most of them the labourers have been working with the authority for 10 years and as per by-laws and service regulations they have the right to get a promotion to their daily wages after three years of service and after next two years, to be regularised.
According to the notification available with Pakistan Today, a junior officer and Member Administration of CDA, Suleyman Warraich issued an order on 24th November and terminated Waqar Ahmed, Fakhar Zaman, Saeed Akhtar, M. Saeed, Tahir Ayub, Sahibzada Faisal, Nadeem Asghar, Liaqat Shahzad, Asif Hussain, Imtiaz Hussain, Umar Shahzad, Raja Arslan, Latifullah, Naveed Ahmed, M. Zubair and Fateh Ullah, the staff on muster roll, environment wing as they were found absent during a physical checking by admin staff. The CDA also blocked the salary of 184 workers on the same account. The terminated staff went to the Member Administration and informed him that they were on duty. They said that they were on duty in the transport cell of environment wing.
One is reminded of the legal maxim, “Justice delayed is justice denied”, which fits the Capital Development Authority (CDA) particularly well as not only are there 117 inquiries regarding corruption, contravention and malpractices pending for years in the civic body, but the accused officers are still working on important posts and they can easily influence the probes underway.
As per rules and regulations of the authority, around two weeks are required to complete a departmental inquiry, but contrary to the rules, a large number of inquiries have been pending in the CDA for many years. The higher ups of the authority are either unwilling or negligent in taking action against their own employees.
The pending inquiries include illegal appointments, theft of official files, illegal grants of house building finance, negligence in duty, financial embezzlements, favouring illegal housing societies, theft of official vehicles, issuance of fake licences for temporary cabins and many more.
On 26th of April 2015, then Chairman CDA, Maroof Afzal directed the inquiry officers to finalise all the pending enquiries against the officers and officials within 15 days.
Then Member Administration Amir Ali Ahmed also directed the Director Security Faheem Badshah to finalise inquiries within the given period. However, the concerned director didn’t take the order seriously and the inquiries are still pending. Sources confided to this scribe that the director security does not want to finalise or fix the penalties to the accused as he is a well-wisher of them all.