- Official says CDA suffering from lack of human resource
- Incumbent administration not willing to make new recruitments
ISLAMABAD: Capital Development Authority (CDA) serves as the best example of the ad-hoc culture and conflict of interest prevalent in the governmental institutions. From top to bottom and left to right, officers having lack of appropriate experience or belonging to entirely different cadres are holding key positions in CDA. Sadly, it seems to have compromised the fundamental doctrine of ‘right man for the right job’.
A conspicuous example of such a conflict of interest can be seen in the CDA Chairman Sheikh Anser Aziz, who is also serving as the mayor of Islamabad. He himself is known to have been a contractor engaged in the business of construction and development.
Despite repeated claims made by CDA Member Administration Yasir Pirzada to transfer the officers to their positions according to their expertise, he has grossly failed in doing that so far. His appointment is widely considered to be a political one since his father is a close ally of the ruling party.
The post of member estate is held by a Pakistan Administrative Service’s (PAS) (previously known as District Management Group or DMG) officer Khushhal Khan, instead of an officer from Inland Revenue who may have had much more experience required for this job.
Whereas, CDA Member Planning Asad Mehboob Kayani holds member engineering post – responsible for carrying out development projects. In addition, he is the chief officer of the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) and also heads the environment wing, which was abolished by CDA but is still impending due to the lack of final approval by the federal government.
At present, there are only 12 officers who are running the planning wing while 30 posts are vacant – a wing which is responsible to plan the development work of the entire capital.
Four Deputy Directors, Sheikh Ijaz, Ayub Tariq, Zafar Iqbal, and Faraz Malik are also temporarily acting as directors of Urban Planning (UP), Regional Planning (RP), Master Plan (MP) and Housing Societies (HS) respectively.
In order to share the responsibilities, in addition to the existing four, CDA board had decided to form four new directorates. However, only UP and RP were formed. The other two, Master Plan Cell and Mapping and Research, have still not been formed to this date.
Therefore, in the planning wing, there were supposed to be eight directorates. However, there are only six directorates in place in CDA.
These six directorates, according to the rules, have to be headed by one director, two deputy directors and four town planners. However, there is not even a single permanent director in any of these six directorates.
Also, there are only eight deputy directors at the moment of which four are also serving as acting directors. Further, there are only four town planners in the entire planning wing.
In addition, the planning wing has an exclusive division including Industrial Planning, Map and Record Unit and a Katchi Abadi Cell. This has to be run by an additional director, two deputy directors and four town planners. However, there is no staff appointed on these posts till the present moment.
The sectors D-12 and E-12 that were developed by CDA for low-income people were launched in 1985-89, but there has been no significant development done in these sectors ever since 1989.
The capital city, which is divided into five zones, is severely affected by these understaffed governmental institutions. It took almost two decades for CDA to develop Zone IV when in 2012 as the board decided to plan this huge area, measuring 70,000 acres, on the pattern of urban development. However, there has been little progress made so far on the project.
A planning official, seeking anonymity, said that CDA is suffering from a lack of adequate amount of human resource. The source added that more town planners are needed not only to speed up the development process, but also to stop the unauthorised construction being done in Zone IV.
It was further said that it seems that the incumbent administration is not willing to make new recruitments, which is negatively affecting the performance of CDA.
Due to lack of experts and professionals, the land compensated by the CDA in the past to acquire the inherited and private-owned land has either failed to acquire it timely or in cases where it acquired it, it failed to develop and auction it, the sources said. The sectors I-11 and I-12 were quoted as recent precedents.
It was further stated that it is easy for the manipulators and investors to manage the entire planning wing by a fewer number of officers for the purposes of illegal and unauthorised construction.
No one has yet been appointed as directory general and planning director general in the Sports and Culture department.
Other inconsistencies include Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) being headed by a grade-18 officer of commerce and trade group, Ali Sufiyan; the most lucrative post of land director being headed by Irfan Ullah, who belongs to foreign group services and a former staff officer of Minister for Capital Administration and Development Division; post of deputy director of Land Directorate is occupied by a junior officer, Faisal Naeem, of information group.
Whereas, some other officers on deputation at CDA includes Revenue Director Abbas Mir of the Inland Revenue Service, Deputy Financial Advisor Raza Shah of the Audit and Accounts Service and CDA Board Secretary and Staff Officer to Mayor cum Chairman CDA Asif Shah Jahan of the Lok Virsa Museum; Human Resource Directorate Director Saba Asim, a grade-18 officer of the PAS; Estate Management Director Nisha Ishtiaq, a grade-18 officer of the PAS.
Moreover, most of the other key posts are being kept by the junior officers on temporary charges that include the emergency and disaster management director, building control (I and II) director, housing schemes director, water supply director, sports and culture director, maintenance director, road director and IT director.
Human Resource Directorate official told Pakistan Today that CDA is facing human resource shortage as 9 posts of BS20, 19 posts of BS19, 69 posts of BS18 and 267 posts of BS17 are vacant from several years.
Another official of BCS said that due to the lack of strict enforcement, CDA has failed to restrict the constructors timely when they were building the illegal skyrocketed structures in sector E-11, H-13. “Once they constructed high rise structures, CDA, all of a sudden awoke and started sealing them,” he said.
As the post of media director (spokesperson) is also vacant since the information group officer Mazhar Hussain was transferred to his parent ministry and no one was notified and given the charge of this post by the relevant authority.
Pakistan Today tried several times to contact CDA Member Administration Yasir Pirzada to get his view on these irregularities, but he did not respond.