NAB takes preventive actions against CAA, CDA
ISLAMABAD
Chairman NAB has taken serious notice of criminal negligence of Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) and has directed Operations Divisions to conduct inquiry into the matter. Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) incompetence and negligence caused loss of more than one billion and precious time of ten years in faulty design of new Islamabad Airport.
The airport does not meet the international standards for use of both airstrips for simultaneous operations as the interstrip distance instead of 800 miles is only 300 miles, in spite of availability of space and land.
Chairman NAB took serious notice of criminal negligence and has directed Operations Divisions to conduct inquiry into the matter.
Chairman NAB during the briefing given by DG CAA under the Prevention Regime Initiative appreciated the efforts of CAA present set up for conducting the detail study and revisiting the charges from international flights operating for all facilities through Pakistan's Airspace and also ground facilities extended to various domestic and international carriers.
It may be noted that NAB initiated inquiry about the auditing and billing system of CAA pertaining to these charges in March 2012. The CAA has been losing approximately Rs. 10-14 Billions per year since last two decades as its charges had never been revised since 1992. Additionally there was no transparent system of accounting and verification of these charges. The present set up of CAA has done good job and resultantly its revenue will increase from 13 to 27 billion per annum.
In another issue undertaken during the briefing as regards to allowing the towers and high-rise buildings in Islamabad, NAB observed that incompetency, negligence and faulty procedures in planning mechanism of CDA has given loss of approximately Rs 50 crore to one of the builders in Islamabad as the CDA planners failed to coordinate with CAA in calculating the permis- sible safety height. NAB took serious view and has now issued instructions to all its Regions to ask town planners to obtain advance clearance from CAA. NAB also asked CAA to further improve its procedures with intensive IT facilities for quicker and accurate response to its clientage, as also in the case of audit of their accounts.
In another prevention action NAB has directed all its Bureaus to interact with irrigation departments of respective provinces to take appropriate measures in ensuring silt dealing operations so as tail end users would get their due share of waters. Forest departments are also instructed to ensure marking of trees along roads and canals and prepare survey and record keeping.
It is pertinent to mention here that Chairman NAB had a press briefing few days ago pertaining to the Prevention Regime efforts and the aforesaid actions are in continuation of the same regime. NAB intends to improve the effectiveness of Regulators at province and federal level for good governance.