MIRPURKHAS: Mun-icipal Corporation Mirpur-khas’s chief municipal commissioner has accused chairmen of union councils of occupying four record rooms in the corporation’s building and ganging up against him to have him replaced after his refusal to bow to their illegal demands.

The chief municipal commissioner Mohammad Rafique Sehar told this correspondent on Tuesday that the elected representatives damaged important property documents of the corporation when they dumped the record in an insecure place inside the building in order to set up their offices in the rooms.

The chairmen and the mayor had lately held a secret meeting to hatch conspiracy to get the commissioner replaced after merely four months in the office, said sources.

Mr Sehar said that the elected representatives had thrown important official record of costly MCM properties outside the rooms to turn the places into UCs offices. The chairmen should have set up their offices within the limits of their UCs instead of forcibly occupying rooms in the MCM office, he said.

CMO claims PPP men are illegally occupying record rooms in MCM building; tries to get them vacated

He said that he had opposed their illegal move before some reporters of TV channels after which the chairmen ganged up against him.

He said that he had not been involved in any corruption during his four months in the office. The mayor Abdul Raoof Ghori and a number of chairmen had pressurised him to approve some backdated and dubious bills amounting to Rs5.5 million and Rs5.8 million but he shrugged off their pressure and refused to submit as the bills were six to seven years old and might well be forged, he claimed.

Since then, a mud-slinging campaign was launched against him by some activists on social media to pressurise him to bow to illegal demands of the mayor and his coterie, he said.

About the contract for collecting parking fee at bus terminal, Mr Sehar said that the contract had been given to one Shaukat Marri and he was supposed to receive only official fee from buses and coasters after issuing them official fee slips but unfortunately, the contractor was receiving heavy fee from vehicles with the help of a powerful mafia in violation of the rules.

He warned that he would never accept any illegal demands of the contractor and the elected representatives.

Pakistan Peoples Party’s chairman of UC-8, Mohammad Ali, one of the elected representatives the commissioner accused of occupying the rooms, denied the officer’s charges and said that they did not have to damage any record as the rooms where they had set up their offices were earlier used as offices by Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s representatives.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023