KARACHI, May 1: An inquiry ordered by the city Nazim to determine the fate of thousands of missing KDA files relating to houses and plots has reportedly been shelved.
These files went missing from the defunct KDA’s record room and these pertained not only to houses, but amenity plots and commercial or industrial concerns in North Karachi, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Shah Faisal, Malir, Korangi, Landhi etc.
The inquiry was ordered by the City Nazim following publication of a report in Dawn, indicating that over 10,000 files of houses and plots of almost all categories have disappeared from the city government’s land management department or the defunct KDA’s land department.
The City Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, had then set up a two-member committee to probe the matter.
The committee, comprising the city government’s works and services department’s EDO, Brig Zaheer Quadri (a former D-G KDA) and advertisement department’s district officer, Waris Khan (defunct KDA’s land department director) was assigned to probe the matter and furnish a report in a month.
The committee, sources said, did not even meet once since its inception three months back.
However, certain inventories of the files, pertaining to houses and plots, currently being made by the land management department’s district officer (Land), Najamuddin Sikandar, have shown that as many as 2,100, out of a total of 4,500 files, are missing from Korangi township only.
The process of making inventories is continuing and scintillating disclosures are expected. According to sources, files belonging to North Karachi and Gulistan-i-Jauhar, may exceed the number of missing files in Korangi.
In thousands of other cases, there are two different claimants for a plot. In some cases, plots have been found in the possession of those who were never allotted, nor leased out these plots.
Sources said that the major cause of disappearance of files from the record-room of the land department was that prior to the creation of the city government, there was no check on re-submission of files in the record-room once these were taken out for some official use.
Yet another reason cited for mishandling of files was that most of employees of the department either own state agencies or were indirectly involved in real estate business.
Unless a mass-scale reshuffling is carried out in the department concerned, the original files of houses and plots will continue to be tempered with or stolen, the sources opined, adding some officials of defunct KDA’s estate and enforcement department, had also created complicated cases of allotment of plots by issuing forged lease papers in some townships and in a number of cases, there are two claimants for a single plot.
The sources are of the view that unless the entire record of the land management department is computerized, there would be a threat of double allotments, or tempering with files.
Though the city government’s information technology department had chalked out a plan to computerize the record of the land management department shortly after the shifting of the city government’s secretariat to the Civic Centre, the work pertaining to installation of computer terminals is being delayed owing to inadequate space available with the land management department, sources claimed.
