Muhammed Hussain Syed, the Administrator, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), has recently notified to create a non-budgeted post of Director General (Foreign Coordination) exclusively to deal with already notified responsibilities entailing ‘arrangements of foreign visits’ as well as recently added responsibilities such as to ‘make all arrangements of lodging, boarding, protocol, conveyance and etc for the visiting foreign dignitaries in close coordination with relevant KMC, provincial and federal government departments’. I am sure that an official arrangement must be underway to benefit a blue eyed retiree to appoint as a consultant in the department which is either a blatant favouritism or sheer nepotism.
Is this feasible for a cash-strapped organisation which has also failed to disburse monthly salary for the month of November 2012, paid in December 2012, to its thousands of employees and could not manage to remove its financial backlog for many months on account of pension and post-retirement dues for which payment seekers have been going from pillar to post.
It is the time to disburse monthly salary and pension on time and release funds to the KDA hospitals and medical laboratories so that they could continue their services to the employees halted for couple of months. It is the time to curtail a hefty expenditure being incurred monthly on POL for official vehicles. Almost all officers use their POL quota on their domestic use instead of official use for which the quota is sanctioned. The Audit Department is responsible to scrutinise whether journey performed was official or otherwise but it has done nothing with this scrutiny. It is time to keep a watchful eye on the misuse of financial resources of KMC and officers living beyond their known means of income.
The priority should be given to settle monthly salary and pension instead of rehiring a retiree or retirees on the pretext of consultancy. Attention is also paid to those cases where applicants are hired on contractual basis without any requisition by the department.
I request the Administrator, KMC, and the Chief Officer, KMC, to look into the matter or else recently added tax on the pretext of municipal charges would not suffice. A carrot and stick approach must be adopted.