Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The powerful bureaucracy of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is conniving with State Minister for Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) Dr Tariq Fazl Chaudhry to bog down newly-elected mayor of the federal capital and his team.

Sources told Daily Times that the state minister and the senior official of CDA are trying to restrain the role and powers of the local government representatives for their own vested interests.

Capital’s Mayor Sheikh Ansar Aziz and deputy mayors have taken over charge of their offices but their respective powers are yet to be delegated to them.

On the other hand, the CADD minister has chalked out a plan to keep newly-elected mayor and deputy mayor restricted to jobs of construction of roads and cleanliness of the streets.

Sources said that an important meeting of CADD Ministry and CDA officials was held under Dr Tariq Chaudhry, which decided that no powers should be delegated to the mayor and his team in land department, construction of new sectors, allotment of plots, acquisition of new land.

It was decided that the environment directorate would also be kept out of the domain of mayor and deputy mayors. Powers for matters of tree plantation and beautification of the capital city will rest with the CDA chairman and members. Moreover, water supply department will not be handed over to the mayor and deputy mayors and decision has been taken to create a full fledged and separate directorate for water supply. All the powers with regard to water supply will rest with director general (DG) of the said directorate. The DG will be directly answerable to CADD state minister.

It was also decided that the powers for construction of roads would be given to mayor at initial stage. The supervision of cleanliness and sanitation of all the sectors of the capital city will be entrusted to mayor.

Sources further said that around 4,000 CDA employees who would work for the mayor would remain at the CDA disposal and the CDA chairman would be in position to call any of them back anytime he wants.