ISLAMABAD: After observing growing tension between Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI), the upper house of the parliament on Friday constituted a special committee to look into this issue.

Chairman Senate Mohammad Sadiq Sanjrani formed a four-member committee headed by Islamabad’s Senator Syed Mushahid Hussain Sayed and Senators Dr Shahzad Waseem and Mohammad Ali Khan Saif will be its members.

Interior Minister will be ex-officio member of the special committee while additional secretary Senate Hafeezullah Sheikh will be secretary of the committee.

The committee has been tasked with reviewing and examining the jurisdiction issues between CDA and MCI and addressing the issue. Before the formation of local government, CDA was lone development agency focusing only in urban areas and sectors of the city.

A local government department of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration was supposed to look after the affairs of rural areas.

Following Islamabad local government elections in November 2015, over 20 departments of the CDA were devolved to MCI while services of around 10,000 employees of CDA were also placed under the administrative control of MCI.

However, the then government of PML-N did not provide any financial and administrative support to its own Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz to run MCI.

Later on, PTI government, too, did not provide any package to MCI rather during PTI regime, the tussle between CDA and MCI was intensified.

Currently, both organizations are at loggerhead over several issues, such as MCI has no budget to pay salaries to its employees and CDA was still paying salaries. CDA is also paying to sanitation workers of private contractors of MCI.

On the other hand, MCI said its rules of business and financial rules were not being approved by the federal government, which make it unable to even spend the fund, it generates through various municipal services. Contrary to this, last year MCI spent some funds, but later on it stopped spending saying that until financial rules are not approved, it could not utilise the funds.

Mayor said several departments of CDA, which should have been devolved to it under Local Government Act 2015, are not properly handed over to CDA.

Both organisations also in tussle over the property tax being collected by Revenue Directorate.

But on the other hand, over two million citizens of Islamabad are suffering because of dispute between CDA and MCI, which are otherwise supposed to provide better services to them.

The convenor of the said special committee Senator Syed Mushahid Hussain Sayed speaking to Dawn on Friday said that it is unfortunate that both civic agencies of the Capital City are in tussle.

“Islamabad is a model city, but currently it is facing several issues. The issues are related to environment, sanitation, shortage of affordable housing, parking water, etc., but both the civic agencies, instead of overcoming these growing problems, are doing blame game,” he said and added that even both organizations are in courts over several issues.

“Islamabad cannot afford this kind of conflict,” he said and added that public hearing will also be held to get view points of concerned citizens.

Meanwhile, a statement issued by Senate Secretariat said that internal meeting of the said committee was held under the chairmanship of Senator Mushahid and officials of the secretariat on Friday.

It said that Senator Mushahid observed that Senate is the House of Federation and Islamabad Capital Territory which is the centre of this federation should be governed in a manner not just of good governance but also of excellent coordination between different departments.

Published in Dawn, February 29th, 2020