ISLAMABAD: Employees at the Capital Development Authority (CDA) are habitually late to their offices and a large number of them only stay for three to four hours a day.

Although there is a meeting at 9:30am every day, attended by the CDA chairman and members, the corridors of the head office appear deserted until 11am.

One senior CDA officer blamed the political protests by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) over the last few months for the lack of discipline among employees.

“People were often unable to reach offices on time because of the containers placed on roads. Since then, being late has become a habit,” he said.

“For the last one week, people are late because they have to first wait in queues outside petrol filling stations and then come to their offices,” he added.

The official timings at the CDA are between 8am and 4pm, however, few come before 11am. The employees who do come on time are those who drop their children at schools before coming to work and those who take the staff bus.

Only 300-400 members of lower level staff come by bus which is why the building looks deserted before 11am.

“Most mid-seniority officers start coming between 10:30am and 11am as visitors start coming at 11am,” said a CDA official.

Officers at other administrative buildings are also late every day, he added.

Most employees come in around 11am and leave before 3pm

Asim Khichi, the spokesman for the CDA, denied that there was any truth to these statements. “The chairman comes early and other employees are also on time. May be the visitors come late which is why the corridors look deserted,” he said.

However, a visit to the CDA head office or other administrative buildings shows that there are hardly any employees present before 11am and none after 3pm.

“This is because those who drop their children in the morning, leave before 2pm to pick them up and then don’t come back,” said another member of the staff.

Similarly, he said, people leave their offices for afternoon prayers and do not come back. Incidentally, the spokesman admitted that employees do leave the office in the afternoon.

“Some employees leave in the afternoon, however, there is no inconvenience to visitors as the CDA has a surplus of staff,” said Mr Khichi.

The CDA has around 14,259 employees and 13,051 are between grades 1 and 15 and 1,208 in grades 16 to 21.

The situation in various field offices is even worse and according to sources, employees routinely miss work for days without applying for a formal leaves.

“We do not want to call attention to the issue but it is common for employees in environment, sanitation, security and water supply departments to come only to sign their attendance,” said a senior officer of the CDA.

A large number of employees have other private jobs such as driving taxis and selling milk. “There is not much that can be done because these employees have the support of unions,” the officer added.

Published in Dawn January 22nd , 2015

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