KARACHI: The Malir Development Authority (MDA) has started refunding fee deposited against residential plots by the employees of the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) for the New Malir Housing Scheme (NMHS).
The scheme was announced by the MDA in 1997 for CDGK’s employees in basic pay scale 1 to 18.
The MDA had offered 400, 200 and 100 square yard residential plots, but to a great extent, the low ranking CDGK employees were unable to avail the opportunity as only a few applicants for 100-sq yd plots were lucky to get it allotted to them, while the 400-sq yd and 200-sq yd plots were all sold out.
Expressing their anger, the disappointed employees told Daily Times that the MDA had refused to allot any plots in their favour almost after a decade and meanwhile benefitted from the deposited amount and its interest.
We have been routinely demanding the MDA to refund the fee or allot the plots, so they opted to refund a reduced amount without any interest.
It is pertinent to mention here that the MDA had asked CDGK employees to deposit Rs 4,000 each via pay order and have also received Rs 500 in cash from them; however, the refunded amount was Rs 3,384 each.
Around 12,000 CDGK employees had applied for plots and deposited pay orders in favour of the MDA ranging from Rs 4,500 to Rs 60,000 for different categories; therefore, around 11,000 applicants have to be refunded.
While talking to Daily Times, the MDA land director said the project started on 4,500-acre land, but the Military Land Directorate had moved the court claiming a certain portion of that property.
Later, the MDA had received 2,230-acre land and had to offer 32,000 plots of different categories in the NMHS.
He added that CDGK employees had started depositing fee for plots in 2006, but owing to paucity of land, the MDA was not able to cater to all CDGK employees; so they have been asked to collect their money from the bank.
However, he failed to respond to a question as to why the MDA had delayed the draw for the plots even though around 2,230 acres were available.
CDGK employees said after affixing stamp on original receipts, the MDA office refers them to the bank for collecting their money at a reduced amount.
It is also worth mentioning that the then provincial ombudsman Justice (r) Haziqul Khairi had taken suo motu action against the MDA for failing to either allotting the plots or refunding the money, while MDA Director General Amirzada Kohati was served a notice to appear before the ombudsman.
Sources told Daily Times that the MDA had collected Rs 2.933 billion and the interest earned on that was Rs 380 million from 1997 to 2002.
