ISLAMABAD- The Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, which met at the Parliament House on Monday under the Chairmanship of Senator Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi, has directed the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to provide copies of MoUs the Authority had recently signed to undertake joint ventures with foreign firms. CDA had recently signed a secret deal with a foreign organisation for the development of bus terminal in Sector I-11 of the federal capital. However, sources within the civic body had claimed that the Authority had not fulfilled legal requirements for the contract. As per the details of the contract, a private consortium was to construct bus terminal over an area of 22 acres. The consortium had to pay nothing for the precious piece of land, but to bear nominal developmental expenditures and to receive 50 per cent of the income generated from the terminal. The Senate Committee directed the Authority to provide copies of MoUs so that the legal experts could vet the same and point out any deficiency, legal or otherwise, for avoiding trouble afterwards. The Committee also took serious notice of the alleged irregularities committed by housing societies operating in the Municipal limits of the federal capital and instructed the Circle Registrar, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) to provide all information required by the Committee within one week. The Senate body also expressed its serious concern over the permission granted by the CDA recently to construct one or two additional floors on certain multi-storey buildings in the Capital, saying that it could pose serious threat to public safety given the traumatic experience of October 2005 earthquake. Safety comes first. Such permissions have been flouted in the past blatantly and there is no guarantee that the proposed certification by the structural engineers will not be misused this time also, observed the Committee members. Senator Ghaffar, as a precautionary measure, instructed CDA to include two members from the Senate body into the proposed Committee with a view to make the whole process merit-based and transparent. These two Senators will have the authority to carry out random inspections of the sites, it has been learnt. The Committee also took exception to the faulty and sub-standard development work carried out by the various housing societies operating in different zones of ICT and demanded stricter checks by the CDA to rein in these societies particularly with regard to compliance of relevant rules and regulations. It also called for pursuing the legal cases in the courts seriously observing that some times the vested interests manage to take stay orders in order to hide their wrong doings and the public at large suffers. Senators Abdul Raziq, Muhammad Abbas Komaili, Engr Rashid Ahmed Khan,Rehana Yahya Baloch, Fauzia Fakhar-uz-Zaman, Ch. Muhammad Anwar Bhinder and Sardar Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa, Chairman CDA, Kamran Lashari and other senior officials of the Cabinet Division attended the meeting.