Usman Akhtar Bajwa appointed new CDA chief

Bajwa will replace Aziz after he had been removed from the hot seat late last year

ISLAMABAD: Almost a month after its former incumbent was removed, the government on Friday announced a new chairman for the civic body.

In a notification issued on Friday, the Establishment Division announced that Immigration and Passports Director General Usman Akhtar Bajwa will be taking over as the chairman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

On December 29, 2017, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had ruled that Islamabad Mayor Shiekh Anser Aziz’s appointment as the CDA chief as an additional charge while including him as an ex-officio member of the CDA board, was illegal.

The court had ruled that Aziz’s appointment violated section 6 when read with section 8 of the CDA Ordinance 1960.

While removing Aziz from the CDA hot seat, the court gave the federal government 45 days to appoint a new chairman of the civic body.

In view of the court’s order, the Establishment Division had sent names of three candidates for the CDA chairman post to the cabinet division.

The PM’s Office, though, returned the summary and directed the Establishment Division to send only a single name. The Establishment Division resent the summary, including only Bajwa’s name. The summary was subsequently approved.

Bajwa is a basic pay scale (BPS)-20 officer of Pakistan Administrative Service. He is currently deputed as the director general of the Immigration and Passport Department under Interior Division.

Without a head, work in the civic body had ground to a halt with most of the members preoccupied with the arrival of a new chief.

Three-year term

Even as the government looked for a candidate to replace Aziz as the CDA chairman, it moved to limit the term of any new chief of the body apart from changing the reasons for which they could be removed.

On January 11, 2018, the federal cabinet approved amendments to the CDA Ordinance 1960, paving the way for civil servants to be appointed as the CDA chief, the vice chairman and the financial advisor directly.

With neither the Senate nor the National Assembly in session, President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated the CDA Amendment Ordinance 2018, while exercising powers conferred under clause- 1 of Article 89 of the Constitution. It came just a day before the national assembly session started on January 12.

“The government passed the ordinance in haste instead of tabling a bill in the national assembly, on the apprehension that the NA will block the bill which will be used to further empower bureaucrats,” some non-cadre officers at the CDA told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity on Friday.

The presidential ordinance 2018 had eliminated chances for ex-cadre CDA officers to become the authority’s chief. Some non-cadre CDA officers demanded that the CDA Ordinance of 1960, should be restored in its true form and to eliminate the discrepancies between cadre and non-cadre officers.

Complaining of discrimination, the non-cadre officers expressed their disappointment over the move and demanded regular promotions for non-cadre officers just like the ones cadre officers get apart from equality in the privileges and opportunities afforded to officers.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2018.