Dubious promotions: Court asks civic agency to submit complete record

IHC was hearing a case pertaining to non-regularisation of an employee.

ISLAMABAD:

A local court has sought the complete record of appointments and promotions in the capital’s civic agency.

The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday ordered Capital Development Authority (CDA) Chairman Nadeem Hassan Asif to submit details of daily wages officials appointed in the civic agency by the previous government in the last five years. The court will take up the matter on August 15 after its summer vacations.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the IHC passed the orders while hearing a petition filed by CDA Assistant Director Management-II Atta Bari Arshad, challenging the suspension of his regularisation.

The petitioner, through his counsel, Babar Awan, maintained that in June 2012, former CDA chairman had regularised him in grade 17, however in January this year, he was suspended after some officials filed an appeal against him before the chairman.

The complainant’s counsel further informed the court that the officials who appealed against his client’s regularisation had asked the chairman for their own promotion instead to which he obliged.

He requested the court to accept his petition and declare the notification regarding his client as illegal.

During last five years, many political appointments were made in CDA, and a commission formed to probe the authority’s irregularities had stated in its finding that since February 2008, around 2,701 people were appointed on a daily-wage basis, 270 on contract basis, 58 on special scales and four as consultants.

Out of the 2,971 daily wagers and contractual employees, the services of some 890 employees were regularised on the recommendations of a sub-committee on regularisation headed by People’s Party MNA Khurshid Shah.

The judicial commission had also criticised the committee’s direction of regularising the employees, stating that they were not entitled owing to their short length of service in the authority.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2013.