ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Housing and Library has summoned all concerned parties related to the recent housing society scam to clarify their positions.
According to the records of National Assembly Employees Cooperative Housing Society (NAECHS), a purchase of 1,018 kanals took place during the tenure of suspended administrator of the society, Ayub Khakwani. In reality, the society is currently in possession of only 230 kanals of this ‘purchased’ land.
Khakwani had accused the top officials of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration of forcing him to purchase land from a land mafia. The ICT officials rejected the allegation.
Tired of the blame game, the committee summoned former administrator of the society, Ayub Khakwani, the original owners of the land, incumbent officials, former Chief Commissioner Sagheer Asghar and former Deputy Commissioner Assadullah Faiz on Wednesday to speak face-to-face in an attempt to uncover the truth of the matter.
Khakwani was not present in Tuesday’s meeting.
Asghar and Faiz informed the committee that they had not forced Khakwani to purchase the land from “certain land grabbers at a high cost”.
The officials also rejected the FIA inquiry report in which Khakwani, who was a Deputy Secretary of the National Assembly and presently Official on Special Duty, blamed top ICT officials for dictating the terms of this land purchase.
Asghar said the claim in the FIA inquiry report was baseless and one-sided, as he had never been contacted for his point of view. “I do not accept such inquiries without including my point of view. This is sheer injustice,” he said.
He claimed to never have directed the society administrator to purchase land from any particular land grabber as this was outside his domain.
He suggested that all concerned stakeholders be summoned to the committee meeting to discuss the matter.
Faiz said that he had approved the land purchasing file but never asked anyone to purchase the land at a specific rate.
“I had only approved the purchase of land in the zone V in good faith since the society also exists in the same zone,” he said. “But I never specified the rate of the land, in fact I insisted that it be purchased at the lowest possible rate,” he added.
When the committee chairman questioned Faiz about his frequent telephone conversations with Khakwani, Faiz claimed to have had two or three times short conversations over the phone. The chairman insisted that the inquiry committee had records of long phone conversations between the two. The chairman was also suspicious about the ‘short’ time frame (approximately 45 days) within which land purchase for Zones II and V had been approved.
The committee chairman Sheikh Waqas told the media that only Rs30 million had been recovered for the missing 788 kanals of land.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 13th, 2010.
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