DHA and CBC to become one

KARACHI: The administrator of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) will no longer be the president of the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC), it was decided by the defence ministry on the recommendations of the standing committee on defence.

In order to bring both entities, DHA and CBC, under one umbrella, it was decided that the station commander from the armed forces would take over as both the president of the CBC and DHA. A notification in this regard is to be issued soon and it is expected that the new system will come into force from August.

The decision was taken as a part of a one-window operation policy by the Defence authorities in order to bridge the divide between civilians and personnel of armed forces - both serving as well as retired.

The two groups, categorised as A (forces) and B (civilians), have varying rights when it comes to facilities in DHA and CBC. For instance, while a retired colonel might get around 30 per cent on a club registration fee, other residents would have to pay the full charges. Similarly, when it comes to property transfers and other such procedures, civilians often have to face the pain of going from DHA to CBC and vice versa to get their work done - a hassle that most of the armed forces personnel do not have to go through.

With the decision to combine the two authorities, it is hoped that many of the problems faced by residents will vanish.

The DHA executive board comprises 12 elected members and 13 who are nominated by the president, or administrator. The board takes various decisions on development projects and other issues. However, the problem arises when the nominated members oppose their elected colleagues’ decision on issue. According to section 51 of Cantt laws, the president has the power to veto these decisions.

Furthermore, certain decisions forced the residents association in cantonment and DHA to unite on one platform against the discrimination by the DHA when it came to buying property, paying taxes and membership fees of clubs and DHA. “When the storm water drains were being laid out by DHA, the residents associations were not consulted on the issue,” said Asad Kizilbash, secretary of the Association of Defence Residents (ADR).

He said that they asked the administrator to document the fact that DHA will not recover charges from the residents for a project in which they were not consulted. But no such documentation took place and as expected by the apprehensive residents, once the project was completed in 2007, the costs were higher than DHA had surmised. The extra charges, which amounted to around Rs1 billion, were then taken from people.

The spokesman for DHA, Colonel (retired) Raffat Naqvi told The Express Tribune that the cost of the main storm drains doubled from its initial cost because the project was completed earlier than they had planned. “The pace of the work was so fast that it was completed in six months, which caused the project to cost Rs2.2 billion,” he said. He further declined to comment on any change in DHA and CBC’s head and said that he did not know of any decisions being taken in this regard.

After the new head takes over, the issues being faced by the residents are expected to settle down and many taxes, which the residents believe are levied unfairly, will also be done away with as people will no longer have to pay double taxes. Right now, the residents are paying ‘refurbishment charges’, ‘differential tax’, ‘multiple transfer tax’ and ‘separation issue’ of DHA and CBC.

“A case was filed in the Sindh High Court (SHC), which passed a stay order on refurbishment charges,” Kizilbash claimed, “DHA was requested for a five-year audited report which it failed to submit.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2010.