Successive governments have failed to reform and modernise CDA
ISLAMABAD: I was amused by the Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) desperate PR spin and media whitewashing subsequent to the boycott of its commercial auction this week (“Zero bids on second day of plot auction” in The Express Tribune, June 17). To cover its embarrassment, the CDA resorted to the desperate cover-up claim that so-called property ‘tycoons’ have hijacked the auction process with unreasonable demands.
This is far from the case. The sheer incompetence of the board has unified a broad range of usually disorganised and desperate investors who have suffered severe losses and delays and are awaiting a very simple entitlement — reasonable building plan approvals on fair terms, which would enable them to finally begin their construction projects. Seasoned investors are used to routine instances of petty corruption and have lived with it for years. Now, the deliberate planting of impediments and obstructions on a separate basis by the Estate, Planning and Building Control sections has strangled the entire approval process. In the course of strategically racking up their departmental rates of corruption, each of these sections have created numerous and contradictory rigidities which they are now forced to defend in the face of all reason.
This is a tragic situation for the local economy and local development. Numerous projects for the betterment of this city should have been nearing conclusion by now. Countless employment openings in the construction sector have been lost. The CDA has lost the confidence of the market with the result that the cost of public land has depreciated with all but one of 29 plots being left unsold in this auction. That loss will be borne by the public and not by the board members. Months have passed in the hope that management intervention would resolve these complications but despite some sweet promises, bureaucratic indifference and a distinct lack of will squarely point towards mismanagement at the top being the root source of this predicament. Successive governments have failed to reform and modernise this authority and it would be an immense victory for this government if it managed to roll up their sleeves and seriously took up this urgent task.
S Raja
Islamabad
Published in The Express Tribune, June 22nd, 2015.
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