July 26, 2008	Saturday	Rajab 22, 1429

RAWALPINDI, July 25: Government servants working in Rawalpindi are double-minded whether to follow the directives of the city district government dominated by Pakistan Muslim League (PML) or the recently reshuffled administration of the Punjab government.

A cold war persists between the loyalists of PML and PML-N, with City District Nazim Raja Javed Ikhlas and District Coordination Officer (DCO) Jamal Mustafa not accepting each other’s powers, resulting in a perplexing situation.

Eleven executive district officers (EDOs) and some 40 district officers (DOs), besides other staff subservient to the nazim as well as the DCO, are in a fix as they are receiving instructions from both offices with opposite objectives.

Moreover, local MPAs and MNAs associated with the PML-N also pressurise the government officials for fulfilment of their orders, while the elected representatives of PML, who run the seven towns in the capacity of town nazims, resist and oppose any administrative move that is aimed at benefiting the PML-N leaders.

Security squad for the city nazim has been withdrawn, while in the towns, the Punjab government has appointed new town municipal officers (TMOs) in order to put to an end to the monopoly of town nazims.

Some EDOs told Dawn on Thursday that they were confused to a great extent as an order favoured by the DCO was opposed by the city nazim and vice versa, resulting in interruption to administrative affairs of the district.

Similarly, the orders of the city nazim are not obeyed by the district police in the backdrop of the recent incident in which Mr Ikhlas was charged by City Police Officer (CPO) Rao Iqbal on the complaint of a lady councillor affiliated with the PML-N. The city nazim is also the chairman of Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa), but the director-general and managing-director of the two civic agencies are more inclined towards the local MPAs and MNAs of the PML-N.

Official sources said the cold war was not only creating problems for the government officials, but was also creating hindrances to timely provision of civic services to the people.

They said the contractors, who were qualified during the tenure of the PML government, had stopped work on development projects, adding that the new elected representatives were not persuading them to resume work.