Daily Times

The motto of the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF) is to provide shelters to federal employees on allotments but the foundation has failed to defend its motto as irregularities, mismanagement and poor financial control is found in audit reports while purchasing land from an illegal firm on higher costs which has no ownership of the land.

According to sources, the housing foundation published advertisements in various leading country electronic papers for Expression of Interest (EOI) for joint ventures from well reputed national and international firms with long experience for the said project on M2 Motorway for the employees.

However, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with an ineligible firm called KS Developers & Builders (Pvt) limited of purchasing land worth Rs 4,250 million which has no ownership of the land. Also land was purchased from this ineligible firm costing Rs 1,725 million due to which retired and on service employees faced losses due to poor performance of the housing foundation.

As per EOI, only real owners of the land or those having valid power of attorney of land are eligible to offer bid but the audit report found severe illegalities in the initial process of the scheme when land was purchased from KS Developers who were not owners of the said land neither had the attorney of the land.

The audit report further revealed that illegalities occurred due to weak internal and financial control in the housing foundation.

Audit further surfaced the weak performance of the housing foundation as the foundation failed to develop a scheme for the employees as the last project was completed in 2007 despite of depositing billions of rupees by the employees.

The audit showed that the purpose of the housing foundation is to provide shelter to the federal government employees that could not be achieved due to poor performance and mismanagement and the foundation has now miserably failed to pursue its work professionally. The audit added that the foundation did not submit a satisfactory reply to the audit observation. It questioned the transparency of KS Developers which was non-responsive and ineligible.

It is pertinent to mention that the Islamabad High Court (IHC) pointed out 26 illegalities in F-14 and F-15 housing project of the FGEHF. A two-member division bench of IHC on September 26 upheld the decision of Justice Athar Minallah to scrap the project.

According to the detailed judgment of the division bench, the housing project was marred with procedural, financial, legal and administrative illegalities.

A source in the housing foundation on condition of anonymity informed that senior management in the foundation despite being well aware of the scam awarded contracts to get high percentages legally and illegally. He added that in recent months, the IHC surfaced a financial scam of the foundation and hopefully the National Accountability Bureau will tackle this project to highlight corrupt masses inside the foundation.

To get the version of the foundation, Daily Times contacted FGEHF Director General Sajid Manzoor but he informed that he had already left the charge as DG. Daily Times also contacted FGEHF Serving DG Waqas Ali but he replied that soon he’ll be leaving the post and can’t comment on the issue.

Published in Daily Times, January 2^nd 2019.