It pays to be a bureaucrat in Pakistan

Successive prime ministers have distributed plots worth millions among officials.

ISLAMABAD: The parliamentary watch-dog of the government, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), is in possession of a list of 450 members of the bureaucracy who have benefitted from the riches on offer via the plot allotment policy promoted by successive prime ministers.

These plots, given to top bureaucrats, were mostly allotted in the most expensive I-8 sector, where one plot is worth over Rs40million in the open market. The list also contains the names of non-bureaucrats, who were probably friends or relatives of past prime ministers.

However, this list, submitted by the housing ministry, does not directly name the prime ministers who made the allotments in up-market residential localities to their preferred civil servants. Sources privy to the intrigues of the capital said that it is only after incumbent prime ministers use their discretionary powers to dish out a round of plots among senior civil servants do they start getting the bureaucrats’ cooperation in governance.

The official documents tabled before the PAC and exclusively available with The Express Tribune reveal that former prime ministers allotted plots in I-8, E-12 and D-12 sectors.

The exclusive and so far secret list of these beneficiaries of past prime ministers’ discretionary powers, were sought by the chairman PAC Ch. Nisar Ali Khan in one of the recent meetings at Islamabad.

However, the ministry of housing and works has not shared full details with the PAC.

Sources said that, without identifying the chief executives of the country that had misused their discretionary powers, this whole exercise, undertaken on the orders of the PAC, would amount to nothing.

One official source said that the list has been made ambiguous by withholding a number of important facts in order to hide the real motives behind the allotments to civil servants by past prime ministers.

In the list, the ministry of housing and works has only given the subject “list of applicants to whom plots were allotted – special allocation.” No further details have been given about these ‘special allocations’ and how they were made.

Some of the big names of the past who benefitted from such allotments were: A Rehman Malik, Javed Masood, Shaukat  Hussain, Zaheeurdin Babar, Mumtaz Ahmad, Masood Sahrif (former IB chief), Rabia Noor, Shaukat Ali Sheikh, Zafar Ali Hilali (former ambassador), Javed Hassan Aly (civil servant), Abdul Rauf Ch, Ahmed Masood Chaudhri, Abdul Waheed Qazi, Riaz Hussain Qureshi (former PPP MNA from Multan), Aslam Shami, S K Mehmood, Aslam Shami, Manzoor Memon, Aslam Hayat Qureshi (former Chief Secretary Punjab),  Mirza Qaswar Saeed (former DG Public Relations Farooq Leghari), Zaheer Khan, Syed Mohib Asad (former DG FIA), Javed Akthar Sheikh, Sardar Anwar Ahmed Khan, Ashfaq Mahmood, Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Mutawakil Qazi, Shauja Shah, Zafar Hussain Mirza ( judge), Shamsher Ali Khan (former principal secretary to President Farooq Leghari), Mohammad Shoaib Suddle (former IG Karachi), Khawaja Mohammad Hamid, Syed Anwar Mahmood, Javed Masood, Ashiq Hussain Qureshi, Nek Mohammad, Zulfikar Ali Khan (major general) and others.

The list of higher judiciary judges who were given plots in the past and even during the present government on the orders of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as a part of an ‘Assistance Package’ was carried by The Express Tribune on Wednesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2010.