Efforts underway to remove member administration
ISLAMABAD: After dozens of directives issued by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for the provision of required documents about some mega corruption cases, the FIA has now decided to grill CDA Chairman Sheikh Anser Aziz on Thursday, at the CDA headquarters. Information was sought for cases like La Montana Restaurant, Safa Gold Mall, Shifa International Hospitals and 25 personal inquiries of the employees.
Islamabad FIA zonal head, along with the concerned inspector, has organised a meeting with the Islamabad mayor and CDA chief at 11am on Thursday.
Sources said that the FIA will ask questions about why the CDA is using delaying tactics, and are not providing records despite the lapse of a couple of years.
“There are 25 different inquiries including illegal recruitments, upgrading, cadre changing, the katchi abadi case, and the individual inquires of CDA employees of different wings—who were involved in corruption, malpractices, and misuse of authority,” said an FIA official while requesting anonymity.
He further added that the FIA wrote a letter, recommending CDA to set up a commission, and submitting the information about the establishment of Shifa International Hospitals to the investigating agency in July 2016 but are still waiting for a response from the CDA.
“And this is what happens to the rest of the inquiries, which clearly shows that the authority [CDA] has suspicious intentions and wants to save the skin of venal officials, who looted the authority of billions of rupees,” he said.
The FIA will also give recommendations to the CDA on the years old issue of the La Montana restaurant.
Earlier in July, the CDA’s inquiry committee – looking into the cases of the upgrading and changing of the cadre of 1,068 employees of the authority – found that only a single case of change of cadre was carried out in accordance with the rules, raising many eyebrows.
This report was compiled by a three-member committee of CDA headed by Ejaz Ahmed Siddiqui and including Public Relations (PR) Director Mazhar Hussain and Admin Officer Aftab Saleem.
According to the inquiry committee’s report, only ‘one’ case of change of cadre – of ‘Ali Murtaza’ – was done after due observation of the rules and regulations. All other cases of promotion and re-designation were made without observing the required procedures, mostly using the pick and choose method.
Later, the administration of CDA issued charge-sheets to some 100 employees, who were given promotions without using the proper channels.
The sources informed Pakistan Today that the CDA Employees Union (EU) has been backing the cases, and the Union Leader Chaudhry Yasin is angry due to the Member Administration (MA) Yasir Pirzada’s strict policies.
“After the union leader has failed to build pressure, through protests, on MA, and to stop the issuance of charge-sheets, he has now approached Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Minister Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhary, for the removal of MA,” said a CDA official.
The source added that when the CADD minister failed to gather the public at large, on the departure of the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from D-Chowk, he called the CDA union leader and requested him to manage some workers so that he can impress his leaders. Following this, the union leader managed some 2,000 CDA workers, and upon doing that, the union leader demanded the ouster of Pirzada.
Currently, efforts are underway to remove him, as per the deal.
CDA Chairman, cum Mayor, was contacted but he was not available for comments.
