Margalla Towers victims still awaiting justice

Despite several requests, the Prime Minister’s secretariat has not made the report public.

ISLAMABAD: Six years on, the inquiry report on Margalla Tower’s collapse  has not been made public by the Prime Minister Inspection Commission despite repeated reminders by the Cabinet Division. Capital Development Authority Chairperson Imtiaz Inayat Elahi and the Cabinet Division’s Additional Secretary Shahidullah Baig told a sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Division here on Monday.

The committee was presided over by Senator Shahid Hassan Bugti and Senators Fouzia Fakhurruzaman, Najma Hamid, Kulsoom Perveen and Khatu Mall.

Baig said despite writing to the Prime Minister Secretariat seven times on demand of the senate and national assembly, “We have not received the report [on Margalla Towers collapse] or any related information”. He requested the committee chairperson to take up the issue in the senate so the report can be made public. “The mystery cannot be resolved as long as the report is concealed,” he said.

The committee chairman, Bugti, said he would summon the PM inspection commission’s chairman in the next meeting.

Earlier, the inspection commission’s former chairperson, Farooq Ahmed, informed the Public Accounts Committee that he was under pressure from “influential persons” to change the report’s contents.

The 1600-page report of the PM’s inquiry commission is expected to fix responsibility for the collapse of the Margalla Towers in the 2005 earthquake, in which 73 residents were killed. A case was registered against the tower’s owners, engineers and concerned officials of CDA for their alleged role in the approval of a faulty multi-storey residential complex.

Separately, the committee directed CDA chairman to take serious action against the authority’s former director land, Wasim Shamshad, and his associate found guilty of allotting around 4,000 plots along Kurri Road. “The level of the crime is serious. Their plan for the mega scam was foiled due to timely action. Both officials should be punished severely,” said Bugti.

He directed CDA to advertise its vacancies for Balochistan as per quota and recommended that the procedure of appointments on contract basis be ended. The system often deprives people of backward areas, who could otherwise benefit on the basis of the prescribed quota, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2011.