The federal government has ordered more than 500 senior civil servants to vacate their official residences in Islamabad, a report published in a local media outlet said.
According to details, as many as 514 government servants (from BS-17 to BS-22) face eviction as the federal government cancelled the allotment of their official residences and warned them to vacate the houses within 14 days, the deadline of which expires on March 18.
“Non-compliance of above notice shall lead to vacation of these family houses by force in accordance with the provisions contained in Federal Land and Buildings (Recovery of Possession) Ordinance 1965,” according to one of the 514 notices issued to civil servants living in Fatima Jinnah Hostel (78 officers), Federal Lodge-1 (93 officers), Federal Lodge-II (58 officers), 48 family suites (48 officers), Chumari Lodge (36 officers) and Gulshan Jinnah Complex Islamabad (201 officers), as quoted by the report.
Responding to the report, Minister of State for Housing and Works Dr Shabir Qureshi said the eviction notices were issued to civil servants in the light of court orders as per policy as they were living beyond nine months.
The ministry made an intra-court appeal (ICA) against Islamabad High Court’s order where a single-judge bench gave a ruling on a non-entitled government employee’s plea seeking relief to prolong his stay in Gulshan Jinnah Complex.
As many as 16,807 employees of the federal government have applied for allotment of official accommodations since June 2013, under the new policy set by the Supreme Court, the report said and added that the government has already acquired rented accommodations for over 21,000 employees by paying them around Rs4 billion in the name of house rent allowance.
