Development projects await civic agency’s attention

Billions earned from the auction of land unable to trigger investment.

ISLAMABAD:

Despite earning billions of rupees from land auctions, Capital Development Authority (CDA) has not been able to complete the pending development projects in the city.

The authority has earned Rs7.36 billion from the sale of residential and commercial plots since January 2008.

The city managers collected Rs4215 million through the auction of residential plots and Rs3146 million from the sale of commercials plots.

As per section-42 of CDA Ordinance 1960, “receipts from all the different sources of income including auction of plots is then utilised for different development and non-development expenditure” according to their budgetary allocation.

But the city managers did not even make investments to redress the severe water shortage in the city, which peaked in the previous summers.

Chairman CDA Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, however, is content with the current situation.

“I recently visited Turkey to attend a conference and observed that foreign dignitaries were also impressed with CDA’s initiatives for the uplift of the capital city,” he said. Elahi did not respond to authority’s failure to develop new sectors, especially industrial sector in I-17.

On Wednesday, Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Dr Babar Awan was all praise for the authority’s work during the question hour session in the upper house of the parliament. “CDA failed to develop new sector for last many years. However, development of old sectors, G-13 and D-12, was completed in 2009,” he said. The process of handing over the physical possession of plots to the allottees is in progress, he said.

A senior official of the authority told The Express Tribune that for the last 23 years, CDA could not develop a single new sector, resulting in a severe housing shortage. A major chunk of the earned money has been spent on salaries and other irrelevant projects, the official said. Besides this, hundreds of political appointments were also made in the authority, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2011.