ISLAMABAD, July 1: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) on Monday removed a senior official in the building control department and 10 others from the engineering wing because of their alleged corruption.

A senior official of the civic agency while talking to Dawn said the director general of the building control department, Murtaza Malik, had been asked to report to the Human Resource Department (HRD) in addition to 10 officials in the engineering wing.

A source in the CDA said the officials had been removed on the direction of the interior division which had directed the CDA and the chief commissioner office to remove officials who had a tainted career.

According to details, Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan had, on June 20, directed the CDA chief and the chief commissioner to remove all officials who were involved in corruption, and to post honest officials with a clean working history.

The source said it was the first move in almost six years in which the authority had removed a senior official from the building control department.

“More officials will be removed, suspended or asked to report to the HRD for further posting orders. This is because a list has been prepared by the senior management in which officials who failed to perform in the past five years have been named,” the source added.

He said a report was also available with the Ministry of Interior regarding officials who had remained part of property contractors or had been attached with building developers.

“The attachment of CDA officials with property contractors, land mafia and building developers has cost the national exchequer millions of rupees,” said an official of the interior ministry, who requested anonymity as he was not allowed to talk to the media.

The official said CDA had also lost thousands of acres to the land mafia but the authority had failed to recover it.

“The whole authority needs a restructuring, and Chairman CDA Nadeem Hasan Asif has specifically been assigned to remove officials who are not fit for the job,” the official added.

He said the government had shown its full support to the new chairman to ensure the suspension and termination of corrupt officials working in the authority.

“No department of the CDA has ever had a performance audit, which shows that almost every wing of the authority is at liberty of managing its businesses on its own terms. None of these wings has to follow any direction which comes from the CDA Board,” asserted the official.

Despite multiple attempts, no official of the CDA was available to comment on the removal of officials in different formations of the authority. Similarly, the CDA spokesman did not reply despite multiple attempts for his version.