ISLAMABAD                  -                 The Mayor of Islamabad Sheikh Anser Aziz objected upon a summary moved by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) on Thursday for the re-employment of its Member Engineering Humayun Akhtar Khan as Chief Officer Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI).

The move came forward in response to a summary moved by CDA for the consideration of Prime Minister for the re-employment of its Member Engineering Humayun Akhtar Khan—who is going to attain his superannuation in the third week of March.

Humayun Akhtar Khan, an engineer and a grade-20 officer of the authority, is basically a director general services. However, he has been assigned the charge of member engineering CDA on look-after bases by the federal government as a stopgap arrangement. Whereas, he is also holding an additional charge of Chief Officer, MCI.

The letter regarding his re-employment was written last week by the Human Resource Directorate (HRD) of CDA in which Interior Ministry was asked to take up the matter of the re-appointment of member engineering with the federal government.

However, now the Mayor of Islamabad wrote a separate letter to the federal secretary interior to object upon earlier correspondence on the subject. The letter stated that CDA had moved the said summary contrary to the rules and regulations. The letter contended that the civic authority cannot ask federal government to re-employ its officer for the post of chief officer MCI.

The letter explained further that MCI is an independent body and CDA cannot use its name for re-employment of its employees. The Mayor of Islamabad suggested that the summary should be considered for the needs of CDA only.

The letter also criticises upon the performance of Humayun Aktar Khan as chief officer MCI and termed it very poor. It was also informed in the letter that a number of inquiries are underway against Mr. Khan in MCI.

It was requested in the letter that the re-employment of Humayun Aktar Khan should not be considered for the post of chief officer and a full-time regular civil servant should be appointed on the post after his retirement.

He was already at loggerheads with Mayor of Islamabad as he moved a corruption reference against Sheikh Anser Aziz in the Local Government Commission. However, the Islamabad High Court had restrained Local Government Commission from taking any adverse action against Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz.

The section 22 of CDA Employees (Services) Regulations 1992 deals with re-employment of retired officers but the post retirement employment of a grade-20 officer can only be made with the approval of the prime minister, which also needs extra ordinary circumstances and a strict criteria is in place to be followed in letter and spirit.

The rules stated that such re-employment can be made but in case of non-availability of suitably qualified or experienced persons to replace the retiring employee and when the seniority of other officers remains unaffected.  However, when checked from the authority, it was found that two grade-20 officers of engineering cadre named Ayaz Khan and Asif Jah are in the line to assume the office upon Humayun’s retirement.

In past, a similar summary to give re-employment to the Member Planning Asad Mehboob Kiani was also moved to the federal government in previous regime of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. However, same could not be materialised as well.

On the other side, Capital Development Authority Officers Welfare Association’s General Secretary Naimat Ullah has already opposed the move to re-employ him in the authority and stated that the practice should be discouraged.