ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: Letters have started flowing the way of 48 reigning federal secretaries allotting each a 500 square yard plot in the scenic sector D-12 as “retirement benefit”.

Rules notwithstanding, they would get the “benefit” even if they, or their spouse, already possess a plot in any government residential scheme in Islamabad or in Rawalpindi, sources in the government confirmed to Dawn on Thursday.

Colleagues who have retired, or even in service and of equal status but not bearing the mighty title of ‘Secretary’, have been left out in the cold and to their own frustrations and devices.

Their heart-burning would be understandable, considering that the market value of each plot in D-12 is Rs20 million. No wonder the frustrated ones are said to be planning to go to the court to challenge the discrimination done to them by the country’s lawmakers.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was implementing a recommendation by the Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat of the National Assembly that benefits accorded to federal secretaries retiring after June 30, 2006 should include a plot, Secretary Housing and Works Chaudhry Abdul Rauf said.

But the reigning ones could get same before their retirement, the committee said.

Apart from the D-12 plot, each would get a government-paid orderly also - so that they keep some touch, however tenuous, with their past?

Secretariat sources said the plots were meant to keep the top secretaries in good humour with the perks and privileges enjoyed by retired army generals. However, other federal officials of equal status but not carrying the title of secretary have demanded that they should also be favoured with pre-retirement benefits.

A recent government notification laid down that federal secretaries who already owned a plot in a government scheme in the capital would be given an additional plot measuring 500 sq year or one kanal. That decision militated against existing rules that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Ministry of Housing and Works (Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation) cannot provide more than one plot in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to the same person, or his spouse.

Chaudhry Rauf said the committee had asked the government to provide same retirement benefits to top bureaucrats as announced by the government of Punjab for its senior officials.

The official said Punjab government had announced that it would provide a house, a security guard, a car, three arms licences and concession in utility bills to the provincial secretaries at the time of their retirement. Mr Rauf said the facility was being given only to the federal secretaries.

Recently retired former secretary Privatization Commission Tehseen Iqbal said the government should also facilitate all ex-secretaries who have been retired in the recent past.

“It is totally discriminatory that those who have served in the present government have been deprived of this facility,” he said.

Meanwhile, an official of the CDA who did not want to be identified, said the CDA could not provide plots to the government employees as it can be done by the Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation (FGEHF). He said according to a criterion set under Land Disposal Regulations, the CDA could not provide additional plot to the top bureaucracy.

But Housing Minister Syed Safwanullah contended that the FGHEF had nothing to do with the allotment of plots which, he said, was the purview of the CDA.

“We don’t have land to accommodate federal secretaries therefore it has to be done by the CDA,” the minister said.

A source in the CDA said federal secretaries had started pressuring the authority to get choice sites specially in sector D-12 which is currently being developed by the CDA.