Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister’s office, on the recommendation of the Capital Administration and Development Division (CA&DD) transferred over a dozen key post officials from the ministry but it could appoint only eight officials as replacement causing the official business to suffer.

According to the information available a couple of weeks ago, except the Secretary almost all the bureaucrats in the CA&DD were transferred on the directives by the PM’s house. The minister CA&DD Tariq Fazal Chauhdry termed the reshuffling as a result of incompetency of these officials. He also claimed that the officials were removed on a proposal sent by the ministry to the PM’s office.

According to a notification, the CA&DD has so far only appointed eight bureaucrats. The list comprised Nadeem Ahmad Malik appointed against the post of Joint Secretary Admn, Zafar Iqbal Deputy Secretary CDA, Ramzan Ali Deputy Secretary Admn, Agha Nageebur Rehman Deputy Secretary Health, Nawab Gul Deputy Secretary F&A.

The Section Officers (SOs) including Javed Akbar, Syed Hassan Mehmood, Muhammad Yousaf have been appointed as the SO Health, SO General, and SO CDA respectively. Except the above officials, rest of the positions are lying vacant. An official in the ministry while commenting on such a kind of mismanagement said that the authorities were hasty in removing the officials and now they were delaying to fill the posts.

He further added that actually the senior management desired to hire their most favourite persons against these slots. The official further alleged that the clean sweep of the officials was also caused by their differences with Fazal Chaudhry. In the move, Additional Secretary Nasar Zafarullah, Senior Joint Secretary Chaudhry Mubarik and Deputy Secretary Khizer Saleem Khokar were suspended from their jobs. According to the suspension orders, they were alleged for influencing and making the inquiries of former member admin Sulman Wariach and Member Engineering Shahid Sohail disappear.

Some other officials were also transferred from CA&DD. Such officials are as Ayesha Farooq, Joint Secretary, who has been repatriated to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Joint Secretaries Meer Ejaz Talpoor and Nadeem Ahmed Malik have been sent to the textile and religious affair ministry respectively. The Deputy Secretaries, Raja Zahid Pervaiz and Ahsanul Haq, have been sent to the textile division and Akhtar Hameed National centre for Rural Development while Abdul Waheed and Saima Shamas have been transferred to the revenue division and the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE). Beside these senior slots, some transferred Section Officers(SOs) from the CA&DD were Shabnam Firdos, Nayab Imran, Asif Raiz, Waheen Memon, Noshad Khaliq, Zohaib Hassan Sheikh, Manzoor Ali Shah, Tahir Akbar, Fiza Shahid and Sohail Ahmed.

It is surprising that the authorities could appoint only three section officers in place of 10 transferred SOs and four Deputy Secretaries could only be replaced compared to those five who have been transferred.

Some four Joint Secretaries were removed and their vacant slots could be filled only by one official of this cadre so far. Beside these slots, the post of Additional Secretary (AS) is still vacant after the suspension of the previous AS. When this scribe tried to seek the version, of Secretary CA&DD, Nargis Ghuloo, she was not available despite waiting for several hours at her office.

However, a senior official who wished not to be named said that the ministry notified both the officers’ removal and the new office bearers at the same time. When asked the reason about the remaining vacant positions, he claimed “actually some new notified officers did not join the duties as they found better jobs opportunities somewhere”. He further added that the process of selection for these vacant slots was under progress and it would be completed soon.