NA panel irked by absence of CDA officials

Directs issuance of show cause notices

ISLAMABAD: A decision by top officials of the civic body to head to the Supreme Court for a hearing while skipping a parliamentary committee has invited the ire of lawmakers who have decided to issue a notice to the mayor.

The decision was taken during a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on House and Library, which met under the chairmanship of National Assembly Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi on Wednesday morning.

With the Capital Development Authority (CDA) Chairman and Islamabad Mayor Shiekh Anser Aziz along with CDA Member Engineering absent from the meeting, the committee decided to postpone its agenda related to the civic body in protest.

The committee also decided to issue show cause notices to both the officers to explain why they did not attend the meeting.

Officials from CDA told the committee that chairman Aziz and the engineering official could not attend the meeting due to a hearing in the Supreme Court.

However, the committee was of the view that even if the two officers had to appear before the apex court, they could have at least informed the committee in time.

The members of the committee said that discussing the agenda related to CDA would be an exercise in futility in the absence of the responsible CDA officers.

Lamenting the non-serious attitude of CDA in implementing the committee’s decisions, the NA deputy speaker said that CDA had allegedly misled the committee over the past four years and had failed to implement most of the committee’s decisions.

He subsequently decided to invite Minister of State for Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry in the next meeting of the committee.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2017.