Change of guard: Sheikh given charge of KWSB after Farid’s ouster

KARACHI:

The Government of Sindh has appointed Qutubuddin Sheikh as the new managing director of the Karachi Water and Sewerage board (KWSB).

The post was vacant after the ouster of former MD Misbahuddin Farid on the orders of the Sindh High Court. According to a press statement issued by the KWSB on Wednesday, Qutubuddin Sheikh took over the charge with immediate effect, while the former MD, Misbahuddin Farid was given the post of chief engineer of the department.

Earlier, a division bench of the high court had declared the appointment of Misbahuddin Farid as KWSB’s MD and his promotion to BPS-20, illegal. The order was passed on a petition filed by the new MD, Qutubuddin Sheikh.

In his petition to the court, Sheikh had submitted that he was posted as the board’s MD on April 27, 2009, after the competent authority had approved his promotion to BPS-20 as chief engineer. The government had later relieved him from the post and posted him as project director of the special initiative department. He alleged that Farid, then a superintendent engineer in grade 19, was at a junior position to him and was illegally posted as the board’s MD.

The petitioner had claimed that Farid had constituted a departmental promotion committee and made himself its head. He added that Farid had convened the meeting of the committtee on October 8, last year and ordered his own promotion to a higher grade.

In his plea, Sheikh had argued that it was an established law that a person, whose own case of promotion was involved, could not attend the committee meeting to decide such cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2013.