ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority (CDA)’s bid to accommodate the citizens who lost their plots in I-14 during its redesigning 17 years ago has backfired due to the faulty results of the balloting.

Out of the 112 affected people who had opted to get plots in the I-12 sector, the balloting results for 36 have been cancelled.

“Due to the fault in the IT system, the 36 affected people were given plots of wrong sizes. The balloting for the 36 plots will be held again on December 26,” said an official of the estate department.

It may be noted that the I-14 sector was launched in 1997 but during its redesigning in 2005-06, around 680 plots were eradicated from the map of the site.

The CDA offered the affected people alternative plots in I-12. In this regard, 112 people were selected for the new plots through a balloting on December 11.

But during the balloting, many of the owners who were to get 25x50 square-yard plots were given 35x60 square-yard plots instead.

“The faulty results of the balloting were detected when the layout plan was being finalised,” the official said. “It was mainly due to the wrong data entry which will be cleared in the next balloting.”

On the other hand, the top management of the civic body has expressed concerns over the limited digitisation in the CDA. Even the chairman CDA, Maroof Afzal, recently told a Senate standing committee that the issues in the CDA cannot be resolved without digitising all the files, including the personnel record of employees.

“We have decided to shift the IT department from the administration wing to the chairman secretariat to centralise it,” said Amer Ahmed Ali, the member administration.

A consultant will be hired in January to upgrade the IT department and develop special software to hold balloting of plots, he added.

Though the chairman and Mr Amer seemed to have an expansive programme to upgrade the IT department and computerise all the records, several attempts in this regard failed in the past.

“Even now hundreds of original files belonging to the employees are missing while disappearance of papers from files of plots is common,” said an officer in the HR department.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2014