ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to apologise to the residents of the capital city for setting up a non-operational complaint cell on the suggestion of the court for the redress of their grievances.

“The CDA should apologise to the public for the mistake,” observed Justice Jawwad S Khawaja while heading a three-judge bench that had taken up the appeal of a private consultant, Bridge Factor (Pvt) Ltd.

The appeal was filed against the Islamabad High Court (IHC) order of June 6 rejecting a petition by the company against a notice served on it by the CDA for using a residential house as its office at Sector F-7/1.

On February 24, the Supreme Court had suggested the CDA consider establishing the complaint cell to receive and redress grievances of the citizens, including the objections to the non-conforming use of residential houses.

On Thursday, the court was informed that the CDA had set up a website to receive public complaints.

However, when the court asked its staff to open the website, they reported back that it was not functioning.

The court expressed dismay and called the in-charge officer of the cell. The court regretted that the non-working of the cell might have disheartened a number of citizens and asked the CDA to express regrets to them.

Later, Nadeem Akbar Malik, the director general of the CDA human resources department, who is also the in-charge of the cell, appeared before the court and admitted that due to some technical fault the website was not working properly.

He, however, assured the court that the problem would be rectified by Friday.

The court expressed surprise that the cell had received only a single complaint by a citizen compared to the scores of complaints received by the apex court. The court had also provided some of the complaints to senior counsel S. A. Rehman, who was appearing on behalf of the CDA.

Published in Dawn March 13th, 2015

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