The issue of corruption cases/references forwarded by the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) to the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against its officials was one of the most-discussed matters in LDA’s various internal meetings last week.

The officials expressed concern over delay in action, urging the ACE and the NAB to take the corrupt officials to task.

According to the internal record, the LDA had sent a reference of 32 pages to NAB on Jan 29 this year against its 10 senior and junior officials, including a former additional director general (housing), for Rs135m corruption through wrong and fake adjustments of around 30 developed plots in Johar Town residential scheme.

The authorities also sought recovery of the loss from the accused besides initiation of legal proceedings against them and some other people, who were not from the LDA, involved in the scam.

Similarly, 21 other cases were also sent by the LDA to ACE for taking several corrupt officials to task.

These cases included Rs2m bribe from a complainant extorted allegedly by a chief engineer and director and misplacement of important files and other cases of corruption by the accused—such as assistant/deputy directors, junior/senior clerks, assistants, patwaris, land acquisition collectors, estate officers and town planners, etc.

“The real problem in corruption cases is with the implementation of punitive laws. Had NAB and ACE taken a strict action against the corrupt officials, we would have averted spread of such a large-scaled corruption,” said an LDA official.

He said the inquiry officers to whom these cases were earlier assigned for probe did their best through internal inquiries/probes under the PEEDA Act and other relevant rules.

“We have worked hard to unearth corruption committed by the officials. The whole process took a long time and energy. But when the quarters concerned will avoid taking appropriate action, how can we end corruption,” the official deplored.

The LDA official said officials had embezzled billions in the past through committing irregularities in various important projects related to land acquisition, allotments, exemptions and adjustments of plots in Johar Town, Garden Town, Faisal Town, Sabzazar, Gulshan-e-Ravi and other areas.

“There should be a special monitoring wing that could only monitor the departments (ACE, NAB, FIA, etc) dealing with corruption cases. And the government must establish this wing immediately,” he suggested.

The Lahore Parking Company (LPC) has started handing over its several parking lots to a Saudi Arabian firm, AGCN, for converting them into automation mode.

According to officials, the company has started civil work at various sites, including the Ittefaq Hospital’s parking.

“At a couple of sites, the company has completed the work related to infrastructure, installation of the high-resolution cameras, computerisation system, etc. Work on other sites is underway these days,” says an LPC official. He said that according to contract, the LPC would gradually hand over around 250 parking lots to the company which would convert them to automation and then operate them for seven years.

The LPC official claimed the automation of the parking sites would provide a state of the art parking facility to the citizens. – (khalidpak284@yahoo.com)

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2014