The Lahore district coordination officer (DCO) and the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) staff are not on the same page resulting in poor performance of Ramadan bazaars, leaving the public in the lurch, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to sources, unwilling staff of the CDGL was marring the efficiency of Ramadan Bazaars, as the staff complained that they were not compatible with the working of Ramadan Bazaars. The staff said that they were engineers and doctors and did not deserve to sit at Ramadan Bazaars monitoring sales of fruits and vegetables. A TMA official posted at one of the 25 Ramadan Bazaars in Lahore, seeking anonymity, said that he was a civil engineer and it was not his task to sell fruits and vegetables in the market. “Neither it’s my duty nor I am qualified to do all sale and purchase, so obviously I cannot give my maximum output to these bazaars,” he said.
Pointing towards lady doctors in emergency camps established at Ramadan Bazaars, he said that she had hardly checked two or three patients since morning. Had she gone for private practice after office hours, she would have been visited by 50 to 60 patients. This is injustice,” he observed. According to sources, due to immense political pressure to make Ramadan Bazaars successful, the Town Municipal Administrations had deployed staff from all departments to these bazaars and the step was now causing disturbance among officers, as they were not compatible with the services they were offering.
But it was not something against by-laws of service because all the staff was government officials and could not be deployed anywhere according to their service rules, sources said. Around 25 such bazaars were set up across the provincial capital for provision of subsidised food items during Ramadan. These bazaars were facing problems from their first day and service was being marred by quality and overcharging issues. The DCO office, on the issue, said that it was according to service rules and all officers had signed on their duty charts for Ramadan. “Serving the public is their duty and if they do not want to do it they may be sent homes,” the public relations officer of the DCO office said.
