There are several employees who got their houses built long ago but are still occupying the government accommodations. PHOTO: FILE
Hundreds of Capital Development Authority (CDA) employees continue to wait in vain as city managers have failed to provide them with government-allocated accommodation.
The reason for their distress is the authority’s reluctance to evict hundreds of its non-entitled employees who had previously been allotted residential plots and soft loans for the construction of houses on those plots.
There are several employees who got their houses built long ago but are still occupying the government accommodations.
The Accommodation Allocation Rules, as adopted by the CDA, strictly forbids federal government employees who own a house from availing the government accommodation facility if posted in the same city.
The clause states “A federal government servant who owns a house in his own name or in the name of his spouse or dependent children at the station of his posting shall not be allowed government accommodation”.
In the past, several hundred residential plots have been given to CDA employees including low-grade officials under different schemes.
Under four different schemes for employees of basic scale 1 to 15, as many as 3,400 residential plots were given in sectors I-11, I-10, G-8 and G-7. While in 2005, around 3,800 residential plots, mainly in sector I-8, were given to employees irrespective of their scale.
Besides these plots, there are some 4,000 additional residential plots which have been approved by the CDA board but have not been allotted yet due to ongoing litigation.
Most employees, after taking soft loans of between Rs1.2 million and Rs4 million from the CDA, constructed houses, while others sold their prized plots and purchased houses in other sectors, said Chaudhry Yasin, the general secretary of CDA labour union.
He said several CDA employees were illegally occupying government accommodation despite having houses in their own or their dependents’ names.
However, Yasin said, the issue was not limited to CDA alone and said other government ministries, divisions and departments were also in violation of the federal government’s accommodation allocation rule.
In light of the federal government rules, the CDA board on May 10, 2012 decided “All CDA and government houses under the possession of officials who have completed their houses on the plots allotted by the CDA be cancelled and allotted as per seniority to the awaiting officials.”
The decision further states that 30 days would be given to present occupants of CDA and government houses to vacate them.
“Following that decision, 30 employees were served cancellation notices for their houses but not a single one obeyed the orders,” informed a CDA Administration Wing official.
Owing to the stalemate, the number of government accommodation aspirants is multiplying. “The number of officials on the general waiting list is close to 4,000, but all houses in the CDA pool are occupied till 2016” the official added.
According to records available with The Express Tribune, there are 18,635 sanctioned posts in the civic agency on which 13,586 officials have been appointed, whereas only 1,729 houses are available in nine different categories.
CDA Spokesperson Asim Khichi said the incumbent management of the authority was going to formulate a plan of action to address the violations. “Within days a plan of action will be finalised and in its light, action will be taken against non-entitled officials,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 27th, 2013.
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