'Unnecessary' burden on kitty: PM to decide fate of CADD

Islamabad
After a Cabinet panel recommended the dissolution of the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD), Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is to decide the fate of the federal government’s administrative unit overseeing Islamabad’s educational and health institutions in the post-devolution regime.
According to a senior relevant official, there is a greater likelihood of the recommendation sitting well with the prime minister and thus, bringing down the curtain on the CADD within four years of its creation.
Headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, the federal Cabinet’s committee on restructuring of public sector enterprises on Friday recommended the CADD abolition strongly feeling the division has ‘outlived its utility and therefore, it should cease to exist to relieve the national kitty of unnecessary financial burden.’
If things happen this way, the federal health organisations currently governed by the CADD will go to the relevant federal ministries for administrative control like educational ones to the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and healthcare ones to the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination.
Not for the first time, the disbanding of the CADD has been suggested. Twice during the last PPP government, summaries for the purpose were sent to the prime minister but on both occasions, they got the thumbs down.
The matter again came up for review after the PML-N formed the government in the Centre almost two years ago, with many Cabinet members favouring dissolution of the CADD considering it to be worth nothing, especially following the creation of separate federal health and education ministries in the post-decentralisation regime.
And now that opinion has won over the finance minister-led powerful Cabinet panel, which strongly recommended to the prime minister the dissolution of the division currently headed by a state minister, Barrister Usman Ibrahim.
Now if the CADD is disbanded, then the Federal Directorate of Education, Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority, Federal College of Education, Federal Government Polytechnic Institute, National Institute of Science and Technical Education, National Book Foundation, Department of Libraries, National College of Arts and other education-related federal entities will go to the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, while the administrative control of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences-Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical University, Federal Government Polyclinic, National Institute of Rehabilitative Medicine, and Human Organs Transplant Authority will be shifted to the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Services.