LAHORE: Three members of the board of directors (BoD) of the Lahore Waste Management Company have resigned from the office, an official source says.

With this, the board of directors has become nonfunctional.

“Those who resigned included Ghazanfar Abbas Jilani and Athar Tahir (both former federal secretaries) and Tehfeezul Wakeel,” the source told Dawn on Saturday.

“Mr Wakeel resigned on Feb 21, the very next day BoD Chairman Malik Amjad Ali Noon resigned. After a couple of days, Mr Tahir resigned. Both also sent the copy of their resignation to Mr Noon,” he explained. “And on Saturday, Mr Jilani also quit the board,” the source says.

The BoD consists of 11 members - four ex-officio (secretaries for local and government and finance departments, deputy commissioner and company’s chief executive officer) and seven independent members (two having technical expertise). The board was already short of two members but with nine members, quorum never broke.

The fresh three resignations have, however, created the quorum issue.

“Now, the board has become non-functional, so, there would be no meeting and no decision making to oversee and run the company affairs,” the official said.

Company’s chairman Noon resigned from his office on Feb 20, stating the “corrupt mafia within the government is allegedly focusing on minting money from Rs110 billion cleanliness-related contracts the company plans to award in near future”.

Later, minister Aslam Iqbal, through a letter asked Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to get a National Accountability Bureau probe done into the company’s financial matters. He also rejected the allegations leveled by the outgoing chairman.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2021