| ISLAMABAD - Federal Minister for Housing and Works Moulana Abdul Wasay, while taking notice over a news report in The Nation, has ordered to initiate an inquiry into more than one hundred illegal entries in a built up property award of sector G-14.
The Federal Government Employees Housing Authority (FGEHA) has declined to give promised plots as compensation in lieu of the aforesaid entries to the land affectees by citing them ‘against the policy’ but at the same time it was showing lethargy to take action against its own officers, who committed this fraud on one pretext or another. However, according to an official order issued on Wednesday available with this scribe, the Minister for Housing and Works has taken a serious notice of the state of affairs in FGEHA and directed that inquiry proceedings be initiated against responsible officials within the next 15 days.
It was decided that an inquiry committee be constituted earlier to look into the issues of fraudulent payments in the FGEHA may also be directed to inquire about irregularities in Built Up Property. Built Up Property (BUP) award means assessment of houses present on a certain piece of land at the time of its acquisition against which the acquiring authority pays compensation and rehabilitation benefits as per its policy. In the instant case regarding BUP’s award of G-14/2 and G-14/3, those who have their houses in the area were promised to be given plots in G-15 as rehabilitation benefit. As the FGEHA did not have the authority to acquire the land at that time, the ICT administration being competent authority had issued a BUP award in 2014 having the names of 406 families with multiple numbers of BUP in front of over one hundred families’ serial number.
The award was never challenged at any forum by the FGEHA and after getting approval from competent authority the provisional allotment letters were also issued by the housing foundation in 2017 as per said BUP award and nobody bothered to resist or even object if the entries were wrong. In the meantime, most of the local land owners, who got provisional allotment letters from the authority, also sold their plots to third parties as it was a routine practice in Islamabad and even FGEHA never declared said multiple entries as ‘illegal’ or ‘bogus.’ Later, in 2022, the balloting to allot plot numbers in sector G-15 was also held in which these BUP holders were also allotted plot numbers and results were made public on the website as well.
However, when the allottees approached for the allotment letters and people who purchased plots on the basis of provisional allotment letters to get them transferred on their names, the FGEHA has declined to issue allotment letters to those families having multiple entries in BUP award by declaring it against the rules. Some of the locals, who spoke to this scribe earlier, informed that multiple entries were rightly mentioned in the BUP award by ICT administration as there were more than one houses within one boundary and it is a common trend of joint houses across the Potohar region. They said if the multiple entries were made illegally then why provisional allotment letters were issued by the authority to us in 2017 when we handed over the possession of our ancestral houses to them.
The local landowners and third parties who have been waiting for their benefits since last one decade appreciated the federal minister’s notice in the matter and hoped that after initial inquiry, they will get their legitimate benefits or otherwise at least responsibility will be fixed on officers, who made bogus entries and issued allotment letters. |
|
