Housing secretary, PWD chief summoned over faulty elevators

Islamabad

Taking a note of the misery of hundreds of people working in the 17-storey Shaheed-i-Millat Secretariat due to faulty elevators, the Wafaqi Mohtasib (Ombudsman) Secretariat has called the top bosses of housing ministry and Public Works Department for explaining their respective positions on the matter.

Located at China Chowk near Parliament House and housing interior, establishment and housing divisions, Pakistan Housing Authority, Estate Office and National Commission for Human Development offices, the high-rise building has six elevators but five of them have been out of order for almost one year.

Ironically, the sixth one, too, often breaks down.

The building is owned and maintained by the housing and works ministry through Public Works Department but the repeated requests of the people working there to it for elevator repairs, both verbally and in writing, fell on deaf ears.

The employees recently formally approached the Wafaqi Mohtasib (Ombudsman) Secretariat with a request for intervention to ease their misery.

Quick to take notice of Shaheed-i-Millat Secretariat senior official Imtiaz Shaheen’s application, the ombudsman tasked his secretariat’s senior adviser (law), Hafiz Ahsan Ahmad Khokhar, with looking into the matter for early resolution.

Now, Hafiz Ahsan has summoned the housing and works secretary and PWD director general in his office on June 13 for explain position on the long delay in the repairs of faulty elevators.

Both employees and visitors welcomed the development and said they were hopeful that the Wafaqi Mohtasib Secretariat’s intervention would ease their sufferings.

They complained that the building was in bad shape; elevators were out of order; rats were in abundance, and computer networks installed broke down frequently, while the risk of outbreaks of fire and burning of important records was very high.