Mismanagement like measles is a contagious disease. The mayhem at the national level which had spread to major cities and towns of the country has at last reached and afflicted Islamabad, till some years back known as the best-managed city of the country.
With three imposing bodies meddling in the capital’s administration, the confusion has climaxed in chaotic dimensions with the setting up of a task force by the prime minister — the proverbial bull in china shop.
This should be understandable since in this foursome bureaucratic babble the citizen alone has no voice. Instead of democratising the city administration by introducing some form of an elected local government the champions of democracy have imposed a task force headed by a businessman who has assumed the role of a supremo over and above the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the ICT led by the Chief Commissioner and the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD). This last body is a misnomer and was already a joke when it was created as it neither has any role in the city’s administration or its development.
The boss of the PM’s task force is poking his nose into everything that the CDA was created for, making the CDA chairman a virtually redundant. How can an appointee of the chief executive of the country oversee the work of a statutory body is a question that is bothering the legal mind. But in the proverbial ‘state of Denmark’ anything goes.
“The ICT administration is also supposed to carry out development activities in rural areas, but sufficient funds were not allocated for this,” a senior ICT administration official told The Express Tribune.
The rural areas comprise of 133 villages and 12 union councils. At present, the union councils’ affairs are being looked after by the administrators appointed by the chief commissioner.
The CDA was established in 1960 to undertake municipal functions. On January 1, 1981, the Islamabad administration was established and assigned all powers and functions of a provincial government. Prior to the creation of Islamabad District, the city was part of Rawalpindi District.
The CDA earns billions of rupees in revenue from the rural areas but its focus is only on the development of urban areas.
Officials told the lawmakers in several parliamentary committees that the CDA was not empowered constitutionally to work for the uplift of rural areas.
The opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) member of the National Assembly from NA-49, Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, and the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party’s Senator Nayyar Bokhari both agree that the CDA should focus more on development of rural areas.
Chaudhry said that the CDA would earn around Rs4 billion from the Park Enclave scheme, located in a rural area, but it has no plan to spend even a single paisa on the development of the area. He said that the CDA, referring to legal provisions, was taking all benefits from rural areas including property and building taxes, but hesitant to launch any project for the uplift of these areas.
Adding further confusion in the already complex federal governing system, the government has established a new body, the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD), following the devolution of certain ministries.
“CADD has nothing to do with the administration of the city, nor does it have any say in the city’s development plan,” a CADD official said.
Federal government departments previously under the ministries of education, culture, livestock, population, special education, youth affairs and tourism have been placed under CADD.
Unfortunately, “the division has become a bone of contention as far as administrative control of some of the departments is concerned. There is also a proposal under consideration to bring the CDA under CADD’s control,” the official said.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 10th, 2012.
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