Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: After failing to make community welfare project the Club House fully operational, the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) is preparing to lease it out.

The Club House is situated on the lucrative position of F-6 Markaz. It was the first project which was inaugurated by Islamabad Mayor Shaikh Ansar Aziz after assuming the acting charge of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) chairman.

The project was started in 2009 to provide recreational facilities to the residents of the city. However, its construction was unexpectedly delayed.

A revised PC-1 amounting to Rs 112.585 million was approved in year 2014 and the project was completed in 2016.

The Club House comprises upon ground plus two storey building, covering an area of 138×66 square yards, where facilities like men’s gym, conference hall, dining hall, changing rooms, kids play areas, sports shops and other facilities are planned.

However, the MCI has failed to make it operational since its inauguration. Now it wants to hire the services of a private firm to operate and maintain this public facility.

On the other side, a well-placed source inside the civic body tld Daily Times that a high profile personality was interested in taking over the project due to its potential location in terms of commercial gains and he was pursuing the matter.

“It is going to become another scandal like Monal Restaurant where the previous management leased out the building on cheap rates and caused a loss of billions to the CDA”, an officer of the authority said. “There was no plan to outsource the facilities in original plan, but the idea is an afterthought of incumbent management,” he said.

A meeting to finalise the matter was held in the headquarters of CDA. The meeting was chaired by Shaikh Ansar Aziz. The MCI chief officer, the director general Sports and Culture CDA, legal advisor CDA, and officials from finance and planning wing of the CDA were also present.

When contacted, MCI Chief Officer Asad Mehboob Kiani said: “Yes, we have decided to outsource the operations and maintenance of the Club House because we want a state of the art service delivery to the masses on affordable rates.”

“We have a number of community buildings in other residential sectors which are being run through our own directorate but their conditions are quite unsatisfactory,” the chief officer said.

“We have not finalised the terms of reference to lease out the project yet. It has been decided that it will be run through the private sector,” he said.

The community buildings are used to enhance the social connectivity among individuals within a regional area such as a neighbourhood or with a common interest. It is sometimes encompassed under the field of community development.

It is the duty of Mayor Islamabad to revive already available facilities of same nature in other areas with the help of public instead of giving the control of such precarious asset in the hands of private people.

Published in Daily Times, September 30^th 2017.