ISLAMABAD: However intent the PTI and PAT leaderships may be to carry on their dharnas, and the city roads may be dug up for the Metro Bus, the excuse they provided to government employees to skip office is facing the dead end.

For one the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has started warning its workers who had been “regularly missing” their duties citing the two reasons.

“This is a complicated situation, but we want to execute civic duties to the extent possible,” said CDA spokesman Asim Khichi. “Road blocks have eased yet some workers may have genuine problems in reaching office.”

So, for the time being, departmental heads of CDA have orders to issue only “verbal warnings” to the workers who skip office, come late or leave early.

Because the situation on the ground is not normal, most of the CDA employees who do turn up for work try to leave by 3 pm, and the unfinished paper work is left for the next day.

Other workers complain of difficulties they face in commuting to the CDA, and for its official work, for leaving early. Islamabad witnesses traffic mess during working hours and worse when educational institutions and offices close.

CDA workers told sit-ins and dug-up roads no more an excuse for absenteeism

“Traffic conditions are worse than they appear,” said an employee of CDA’s Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA).

“Parts of the city are practically cut off and even police are unable to guide someone looking for the way to reach a certain destination. Just try reaching Karachi Company from I-8 sector,” he said.

While the massive digging of roads for the Metro Bus project has created this situation, the roads leading to Red Zone have time-consuming checkpoints and blocked at places by shipping containers to keep the political ‘dharnas’ in check.

No wonder the DMA’s enforcement and engineering wings are the worst hit by the road closures and restricted areas.

“Encroachers are having heydays because we cannot move our heavy machinery as we need special permission for navigating through the restricted areas to reach them,” said director enforcement Mohammad Iqbal.

Monitoring teams of the DMA even avoid going to check the weekly bazaar at Peshawar Morr or G-10 due to the traffic mess as a large patch has been dug for metro bus.

“A more serious issue is that the department has lost around Rs6 million revenue in two months because there is no advertising business and our staff could not collect trade licence fees,” said an officer in the DMA.

Minor municipal repair and maintenance work has suffered during the same period as the road disruptions have restricted the mobility of the employees of the engineering department and encouraged absenteeism.

“What can we do? We need a permit to move raw material to the work site but then nobody dares authorising moving heavy machinery under the prevailing conditions,” said an employee in the engineering department.

He was referring to the risk of damage or arson to CDA equipment in case a law and order situation erupted.

“There is a general trend of targeting government property during riots and we could be facing inquires for years in case of any incident,” he added. “So the best thing is to lie low and stay calm.”

Published in Dawn, September 10th , 2014