PIDC employees turn to the court as their hard-earned plots are being sold. PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI:
The employees of Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) dreamed of spending their post-retirement life at a home built with their hard-earned money. Their dreams are now slowly fading away.
In 1971, 450 employees of PIDC decided to set up a cooperative society over 40 acres. For the next three decades, the employees made heavy investments for the development of the society, to secure their future. In 2010, Sindh cooperation department superseded the elected committee of PIDC employees’ cooperative housing authority and arbitrarily appointed an administrator, Abdul Fateh Jamali.
“What sort of a country do we live in where senior citizens like me are deprived of their legal assets when they need them most,” complained a 75-year-old former employee, Yaqoob Dayala, made the investment around 35 years ago.
Cooperative housing societies are associations owned and run by semi-governmental or non-governmental organisations for the socio-economic benefit of their employees. Hundreds of such residential schemes are spread across Karachi, with around 131 in the Karachi Development Authority’s Scheme-33 alone.
These societies can ‘legally’ be taken over by the government through appointment of administrators but it cannot take over those working in a transparent manner without any allegations against them, one of the employees pointed out.
“We were not told that the government has taken over until they started selling the plots,” said Tahir Ahmed Sheikh, former elected secretary-general of the cooperative society. “It was equivalent to plundering a housing society being managed by an elected body,” he complained, pointing that there have been no allegations of misappropriation against us even in the audits.
“It was not even in my wildest imagination that I will be subjected to this kind of swindling and corruption at this age,” said a 77-year-old retired employee of PIDC, Syed Sarwat Hussain Tirmizi, who has survived cancer. “I hold each and every required document for the residential plot, declaring it a legal property in my wife’s name.”
The age-old members of the cooperative housing society alleged that the ‘mafia’ who has taken over the 40 acres has even removed the names of the genuine members from the official record of plot-owners. Documents available with The Express Tribune confirm that while the housing society was under the care of administrator Jamali, a sum of Rs10.3 million was withdrawn from its bank account within a span of nine months - between August 1, 2011 and May 9, 2012.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assembly, Syed Sardar Ahmed, in his letter written to Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, lamented that there were complaints against the provincial cooperation department for superseding the elected bodies of cooperative societies and for appointing inefficient administrators. “Earlier I had proposed to remove all the illegally appointed administrators and ordered transparent elections within 60 days but this proposal, unfortunately, never came before the cabinet,” said Ahmed.
The illegally removed elected office-bearers of the housing society approached the Sindh High Court that had directed the provincial cooperation department to hold elections amongst the registered members of the society.
Meanwhile, the cooperative societies’ deputy registrar, Syed Hajan Shah, told The Express Tribune that the department has the authority to supervise the working of cooperative societies. “The action was taken only against the corrupt office bearers on a number of complaints filed against them,” he clarified. Shah failed, however, to cite the actual charges against the office-bearers that had prompted the department to take over.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 4th, 2014.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Yaqoob Dayala is 25 years old instead of 75 years old. The error is regretted.
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