Misuse of rest house: Rampage by drunkard son of CDA official hushed up

Son of senior officer of the authority and his friends broke furniture during a fight at the facility

ISLAMABAD: City managers seem reluctant to conduct an inquiry into a bizarre incident occurred at the Capital Development Authority (CDA) rest house, recently when the son of a senior officer of the authority and his friends went on a violent drunken rampage at the facility.

“The drunken son of the officer and his friends began to raise hell and quickly got out of control and broke furniture while fighting each other,” a source at the rest house at Simly Dam area told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

The CDA top management is attempting to hush up the matter, however. Only a circular was issued by the CDA chairman in the wake of the incident ‘instructing’ the office to ‘strictly’ follow rules while renting out the facility to officers and parliamentarians.

Sources at the CDA said the high-ups were hushing up the matter because the father of the young man was holding a senior position at CDA’s Administration Wing on deputation, as he is an employee of a premier security agency.

“As fully drunk, all of a sudden, they started fighting over some issue, hitting each other with cutleries, dishes, furniture and other things they lay their hands on,” said the source at the facility, adding that during the fight they also broke costly furniture.

The issue was soon brought to the notice of the CDA chairman and member engineering, who looks after the affairs of the rest house, but no action has so far been taken to fix responsibility, the source said.

When contacted, Member Engineering Shahid Sohail denied that any such incident had happened at the facility.

When asked why the CDA chairman has issued the circular (asking him) to follow rules while renting out the facility, he could not give a satisfactory answer only saying, “It’s not in my knowledge”.

When contacted, the father of the accused first declined to comment on the issue. When pressed further, he said that the issue was being blown out of proportion by certain quarters.

The rest house has four fully-furnished rooms and only the CDA officers of grade 16 and above and parliamentarians are entitled to use it.

The CDA charges a meagre amount of Rs500 for one room for one night stay.

The CDA chairman did not attend calls made on his cellphone to seek his comments on the issue. He was also sent text messages but he did not respond.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2014.