Prejudicial practices: Cash-strapped CDA sending 30 employees for Hajj

Christian employees claim authority severely discriminates on religious grounds.

ISLAMABAD: City managers rarely miss an opportunity to narrate the dire financial health of the capital’s civic agency at various forums, including the parliamentary committees.

Similarly, they proudly boast about steps taken to pacify their financial difficulties by curtailing non-developmental expenditures.

The reality, however, is quite to the contrary as the Capital Development Authority Chairman Nadeem Hasan Asif, in a ceremony held recently, handed over travelling documents to around 30 CDA employees to proceed for Hajj this year on the authority, and thus the tax payer’s, expense.

“The programme, whose participants were selected through balloting, will cost around Rs14 million,” said an official of the treasury wing requesting anonymity.

“All of you are the luckiest among thousands of CDA employees,” the authority’s chairman reportedly said at the recent gathering. He further said the CDA management would take more steps for the betterment and welfare of its employees.

The ceremony sent a wave of distress among over 2,000 Christian employees of the authority, who have been ignored in the CDA’s go-for-pilgrimage drive, according to an official. “It is tantamount to discrimination between Muslim and Christian employees, who equally share the responsibilities at CDA and thus are liable to equal treatment,” said one of the members of a group of Christian employees who held a meeting at the office of the Municipal Administration in the backdrop of the ceremony to evolve a future course of action.

“We don’t support the idea of sending employees on religious tours to Saudi Arabia or the Vatican at taxpayers’ money. But if the authority wanted to do so then it should treat all of its employees equally,” he added.

He said the Christian employees are planning to launch a protest against the blatant discrimination. An official of the authority’s administration wing, while taking to The Express Tribune, said the authority had announced a similar plan to send Christian employees to Rome, Italy, in 2008, but the lack of interest at the top buried the programme.

“In 2010 and 2011, 20 Christian employees were selected through balloting to visit the Vatican. But the selected employees did not take interest in the programme, leading to its cessation,” the official said.

The reason was obvious — most Christian employees working in CDA are employed at the sanitation directorate and do not have formal education. “The selected employees did not even possess passports,” he added.

“CDA also did not hire services of private tour operators, as it does every year for its Hajj programme, to assist the illiterate Christian employees to prepare necessary documentation and visa processing,” the official added.

Last year, the authority had selected 10 Christian employees holding a valid passport to visit the Vatican, even though it was against the rules and regulations governing such programmes, said an official. In a cruel twist of fate, the employees were asked to reimburse the authority’s money spent on their tour as their basis of travelling was not according to set procedure.

Now, Rs6,000 per month is deducted from the salary of the employees until the total amount spent on each employee — Rs350,000 — has been paid off.

There is no plan to send any Christian employee on a religious tour this year.

CDA Director Public Relations Asim Khichi denied that CDA discriminates between its Muslim and Christian employees.  He said the Muslim employees are sent for Hajj under an agreement signed with the labour union of the authority. “The authority properly takes care of the welfare of Christian employees. Soon a comprehensive strategy will be devised to address this specific reservation of theirs,” he assured.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2013.