MUZAFFARABAD, Dec 27: The administrator of the municipal corporation has issued notices to four officers of the civic body and directed them to immediately report back to their parent organisation. The officers in question were among those engaged in rehabilitation-related work in earthquake-affected areas.

“I was left with no choice but to serve notices to them because being already understaffed we cannot afford the absence of a single person,” said Zahid Amin, who has recently been appointed administrator.

“I have also ordered stoppage of salaries and other privileges to those officers who fail to report back and do their actual job. Our job is not distribution of cheques but resolution of civic problems,” he added.

“We face an enormous job to deal with a population of 150,000 in a city which has spontaneous camps and much of which is still buried under rubble,” he said.

He said he was at a loss to understand why the authorities were not detailing officers in rehabilitation-related tasks from those departments which had no work to do after the quake.

“There are many officers in the Muzaffarabad development authority who have no work to do, so why not to engage them instead of our officers?” asked the administrator.