June 18, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 13, 1429

LAHORE, June 17: The Punjab government has questioned the allotment of plots to government officials in the journalists’ housing colonies in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Multan.

According to official sources, lists of government officials belonging to the Information Department and its attached Directorate General of Public Relations have already been prepared and sent to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

They said right now there was a pressure on the government to complete the development work in these colonies. But it was being debated why the previous PML-Q government had indirectly benefited government officials in the garb of providing shelter to homeless journalists.

They said functionaries of the DGPR and the information departments were given plots by ‘creating legal justification’. But quite a few of the beneficiaries were especially favoured.

They said former DGPR Farrukh Shah was not a government employee, but he was given a plot from the electronic media quota. There were also other examples in which a former deputy secretary was given a plot even after he was transferred. Another was given a plot only after a few months of his posting in the Information Department.

An official of the Punjab Institute of Languages, Art and Culture was also given a plot in the Lahore journalists housing colony under special directions from those who mattered in the PML-Q government.

“We are debating why the government officials, who are going to get houses upon their retirement, have been given plots in the colonies where money is being spent from the government kitty,” he said.