The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has established a Facilitation Desk of ICT Administration (ICTA) to resolve issues and provide services of around 18 departments working under the local administration to its members under one roof. Amir Ali Ahmed, Chief Commissioner Islamabad/Chairman CDA formally inaugurated the operation of the Facilitation Desk during a ceremony held at ICCI.

Addressing the ceremony, Amir Ali Ahmed announced that a representative of ICCI would be included in the Design Vetting Committee (DVC) of CDA to speed up approval of construction plans of private sector. Highlighting various initiatives taken to bring reforms in CDA, he said that CDA has now been converted into a financially robust civic body as it closed outgoing financial year with an amount of around Rs.9-billion in surplus while when he had taken over its charge, it was not able to pay salaries of its staff. He said that CDA’s development budget has been increased from 20 percent to 36 percent. He said that CDA generated around Rs.17 billion from auction of plots. He said all stuck up development projects were being revived as CDA development cycle has got the momentum and an amount of Rs.25 billion has been dedicated for development works that would be further increased to Rs.35 billion. He said that these development works would give boost to business activities. He said that CDA would soon start repair of roads and was in the process of hiring consultants for development of parking plazas and rain water harvesting. He said that automation of CDA would be completed in near future to reduce human interaction and facilitate business community and citizens. He said that Islamabad would be developed into a tech-based city of the country. He lauded the initiative of ICCI for setting up ICTA Facilitation Desk and said that ICCI should also setup CDA Facilitation Desk for facilitation of business community.

Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Ahmed Waheed, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that ICCI was focused on providing maximum facilitation to its members in business promotion and inauguration of ICTA Facilitation Desk was another positive step in that direction. He said that ICCI has already setup the Facilitation Desk of Pakistan Customs and such desks of more organizations including CDA, FBR, Police would be established soon to further facilitate the business community in business promotion. He thanked Chief Commissioner Islamabad for visiting ICCI to inaugurate the FD and hoped that he would take more measures to resolve CDA related issues of business community. <

Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President ICCI, Mian Akram Farid Chairman Founder Group, Muhammad Ejaz Abbasi, Zafar Bakhtawari, Baser Daud, Ch. Naseer, Ajmal Baloch, Malik Rab Nawaz, Khalid Chaudhry, Syed Amin Pirzada and others also highlighted various issues and gave useful suggestions to further improve the performance of CDA.