ISLAMABAD: In a bid to provide relief to citizens, the newly-appointed CDA chairman, Mohammad Ali Randhawa, on Monday directed the officers concerned of the civic agency to keep offices of citizen facilitation centre and one-window operation open till 9pm for property transfer cases.

He also directed them to visit Lahore to see Lahore Development Authority’s (LDA) facilitation centre and one-window operation and same system should be replicated in CDA.

A six-member CDA team headed by Director General Works Habibullah Sheikh, director one-window operation Khizar Satti, Director Information Technology Shahzad Malik and few others will visit Lahore (today) to inspect one-window operationof the LDA, which remained under administrative control of Mr Randhawa when he was serving as Commissioner Lahore.

Sources said that during his visit to CDA’s one-window operation, new Chairman also listened to citizens’ complaints and issued directions for their redressal. He also showed his displeasure over pending cases, and directed the officers concerned to keep facilitation centre opened till 9pm. “Staff should be deployed from 9am to 9pm for the convenience of citizens,” he said.

Asks officers to handle property transfer cases till 9pm

Sources said that the CDA chairman expressed his dissatisfaction over the performance of facilitation centre.

He also directed digitisation of all the records of the CDA facilitation centre immediately, besides completing the ongoing construction work there as soon as possible.

Through the said facilitation centre, people get their property and land transferred from the CDA. There are a number of departments such as land directorate, estate wing, revenue department, building control, etc., which issues various kinds of no-objection certificates (NOC) before transfer of property.

Some of the employees talking to Dawn said that besides bringing about improvement in the working of this organisation, the new chairman should also issue transfer orders of all those employees, who have been serving in the directorates for years under transfer-posting mode (as whenever these officials transferred from these directorates, majority of them managed to get reposting after sometimes.”

An official said: “All inquiries in the directorates should also be decided without any delay and all responsibility should be fixed to create deterrence for other employees as a number of inquiries related to directorates in question are pending.”

He said CDA had thousands of employees, but some officials always do lobbying to get their posting in these lucrative directorates.

“Chairman should conduct an audit of transfer and posting in estate (commercial) land, building control, OWO and revenue departments, besides checking record of inquiries,” another official on condition of anonymity said.

Meanwhile, Mr Randhawa also visited CDA Hospital, which is also known as Capital Hospital and Rescue 1122.

According to a spokesperson of the civic agency, the CDA csaid expressed displeasure over the poor cleanliness and security arrangements at the hospital.

He issued instructions to further improve patient treatment facilities and also took notice of the out of order MRI machine.

He directed that MRI machine should be repaired as soon as possible and made functional for patients. Sources in hospital said that this machine is lying dysfunctional for the last seven months.

The tender was opened on April 26 this year and file has been submitted to finance wing, they said.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2024