A party that uses religion to advance its political interests and exploits the children of poor families by using them in madrassas and street sit-ins has once again had another corruption-tainted face exposed through documentary evidence.
According to Public Accounts Committee records, reports of the Auditor General of Pakistan and NAB documents, whenever Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), which has consistently set its sights on powerful and lucrative federal ministries, was given the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Housing and Works, merit, law and ethics were openly trampled upon.
According to documented facts, JUI-F was given the Federal Ministry of Housing and Works twice at the federal level. The first time was from 2008 to 2013, and the second time was during the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government, from April 2022 to August 2023, when senior JUI-F leader Maulana Abdul Wasey was appointed federal minister.
The damning audit reports from both these tenures have established that these religious leaders, who preach sermons and offer moral advice, crossed all limits of dishonesty behind the scenes by distributing government plots, funds and houses among their favourites.
The most alarming aspect of this mega scandal emerged at the Estate Office in Islamabad, where, during the tenures of JUI-F ministers, the allocation of government houses and flats reserved for public servants was turned into a profitable business.
According to the audit report and NAB inquiry, thousands of deserving government employees continued to wait for their turn on the General Waiting List for years, while Estate Office officials, allegedly at the behest of influential circles within the ministry, issued hundreds of fake allotment letters in exchange for hefty bribes from private agents and JUI-F’s favoured workers.
Following these illegal allotments, which were made in violation of the law and prescribed quotas, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) subsequently had to register formal criminal cases.
It was not just government houses. In the most valuable sectors of the federal capital, F-14 and F-15, a mega housing society scandal worth billions of rupees was also flagged during JUI-F’s tenure in the ministry.
When the Auditor General examined these projects of the Federal Government Employees Housing Authority (FGEHA) in detail, it emerged that senior management had awarded contracts worth billions of rupees to specific contractors and incompetent developers allegedly to receive hefty illegal commissions and kickbacks.
The alleged corruption was exposed publicly when the Islamabad High Court (IHC) identified 26 serious legal, administrative and financial irregularities in these projects, and a division bench of the high court ordered the cancellation of the entire project. As a result, poor allottees and the national exchequer suffered billions of rupees in rental and development-related losses.
Similarly, billions of rupees collected from government employees in the name of plots and apartments in projects such as “Green Enclave-I” and “Lifestyle Residency G-13” were also allegedly squandered. According to the audit report, funds allocated for these projects were diverted to alternative heads and unapproved advance payments.
Millions of rupees were paid in advance to manufacturers and favoured firms without bank guarantees, but the work remained incomplete for several years. The current Ministry of Housing has also expressed serious displeasure over these prolonged delays and financial irregularities dating back to JUI-F’s tenure and has ordered fresh transparent audits of all the projects.
Even in the renovation and furnishing of federal buildings, PPRA rules were thrown to the wind, with bills approved at rates 200 per cent higher than market prices without issuing advertisements.
Public and political circles say that all these details demonstrate that JUI-F has always used religion to gain power and secure family and political benefits, and that the misconduct in the Housing Ministry under its supervision has become an enduring stain on its so-called religious politics.
