Sources revealed on Tuesday that corrupt officials in the Capital Development Authority (CDA) have found themselves in a fix following Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan’s efforts to bring the authority directly under his control from the Cabinet Division.
Under the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s government, the CDA was brought under the direct control of the prime minister.
According to sources, the CDA’s corrupt officials are unhappy at being placed under the Interior Ministry as previously under PPP’s Faisal Sakhi Butt, they had enjoyed unbridled opportunities for corruption and land grabbing. Butt served as adviser to Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani on the CDA.
Sources in the CDA said that if Chaudhry Nisar wanted to eliminate corruption from CDA he had start by purging its tainted officers, who enjoyed full support from the land grabbing and property mafia.
Currently, over 10,000 acres of state land worth trillion of rupees is in encroachers’ hands in Zone-IV of the federal capital, while dozens of housing societies in Zone-IV and Zone-V are minting money from innocent citizens with the complicity of these officials.
Sources said that settling the issues in these zones would be greatly beneficial to the citizens who have been waiting several years to acquire their plots’ possession.
They added that in addition to cracking down on the corrupt officials, solving the water problems and launching a bus service should be among the top priorities of the new government.
“The bus service project has been delayed again and again and should be given special focus as the common man is being compelled to travel on jam-packed Hiace vans,” said a senior CDA official.
He said that bad governance in the CDA could be gauged from the lack of a garbage dumping or landfill site in Islamabad. The CDA allocated a site for this in Kuri in Zone-IV in 2005, but it has still not been built properly.
