Naya CDA not developing any new sectors

Civic agency under PTI following a policy of inaction seen during PPP, PML-N administrations by not adding housing

ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) Board has approved a Rs27 billion budget for the fiscal year 2019-20, with no plans to develop new sectors. Citizens of the federal capital — who top the requests for low-cost housing under the PM’s Naya Pakistan Housing Project are losing hope that they may own a home in a city where they have spent their lives working.

Although the federal government’s announced that five million new housing units will be built across the country, it appears that the message did not get through to the federal capital’s city managers, as no new residential projects have been budgeted for either.

The CDA has failed to introduce a new residential sector in the past 14 years.

Park Enclave was the last significant housing scheme introduced, and even that scheme was limited to around 650 plots measuring a kanal each and at price points only affordable to the elite. The stop-start nature of the scheme – due to the alleged corrupt practices of a strong lobby in CDA and property dealers – led to further problems with the scheme.

Sector G-14 was the last residential sector the CDA initiated, which was under former CDA chairman Kamran Lashari during the General (retired) Pervez Musharraf’s era. No new residential sectors have been developed during either the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) or Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) governments.

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Announcements for initiating 10 new sectors – D-13, E-13, F-13, C-14, C-15, C-16, H-16, I-17 and D-16 – and turning Sector I-17 into an industrial zone were made during PPP regime but little has been done on the ground.

Talks on procuring land in the less populated sectors of C-15 and C-16 are stuck in the first phase.

Even though a decision had been made to develop Sector C-14 in collaboration with a construction company under a public-private partnership, the talks went nowhere.

Every CDA chairman over the last 14 years has run the civic agency on an ad-hoc approach with little interest shown towards launching new sectors.

Running income sources have also not been developed for the civic body, which the CDA needs to become self-sufficient. As a result, the civic agency has turned to the auction of plots in the federal capital every few months, fast turning it into a permanent policy to cover its non-development expenses. The latest in that series is to auction off plots for the construction of high-rises in the city.

Even though the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government had initially shown some interest in managing the federal capital by abolishing the Capital Administration and Development Division and the ministerial post and then launching a federal commission to work on creating a new master plan of the city for the next 20 years, it has shown little interest beyond that in changing the culture of the civic body.

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Meanwhile, a cabal of property dealers has allegedly gotten funds approved for development work in Park Enclave and had work initiated on it. The incumbent government is also reportedly showing major interest in the project.

CDA spokesperson Safdar Ali Shah shared that working on projects which have been subject to delays for years have been among the priorities of the current administration, adding that work on them is being initiated quickly.

Incumbent CDA Chairman Amir Ali Ahmed, who is also the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration chief commissioner, has pushed for development works in three stalled sectors, including Sector E-12, I-14 and I-15. In late May, the project concept-I (PC-I) for developing the sectors was approved in a meeting of CDA’s Development Working Party (DWP). 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2019.