Urban Development and Housing Acting Minister Accused Of Mistreating Gov’t Employees

AVA- Some officials of the Property Department, which operates under Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, claimed that Mohammad Jawad Paikar, Acting Minister of Urban Development and Housing, mistreated employees of the authority and entered the department by force and took some important documents with him.
The officials said they have filmed the incident. The incident happened on Wednesday and the department remained closed on Thursday and its officials were not allowed to enter the compound, one official of the department explained.  
“They entered to the office of a senior official of Property Department with force, from where property orders are issued," said Mohammad Rafi, an official of the department. "They entered the office with four armed men and took some documents. It means we have an internal mafia.”
One reason behind the move, another official of the department Abdul Qadir said, is that the Property Department had a good revenue collection last solar year and that this "affects the interests of mafia groups".
“Revenues of the Property Department reached to at least AFs1.1 billion and this drove the attention of a number of land mafia and land grabbers,” Abdul Qader, Head of Maintainance Office of the Property Department.  
Another reason, according to officials, is that the Property Department has been merged with the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing based on an agreement and based on a presidential decree. However, officials of the department said there is no agreement and no decree and that they do not want the authority to be merged with the ministry.
A spokesman of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, Hashmatullah Nasiri, rejected the claims and said the Property Department is operating under the Urban Development and Housing Ministry.
The Property Department previously operated under the Ministry of Finance.   
“Their protest somehow is baseless,” Nasiri said. “All the processes have been done based on the law. No type of bullying has happened in the Urban Development and Housing Ministry.”
“They (security forces) do not have any decree or letter on hand for preventing us from entering our offices, but they do not let us to go in,” said Khpulwak Popal, an official of the Property Department said.  
“Armed men took us out of our offices by use of force and today they did not let us to go in,” said Hekmatullah, another official of the authority. 
The Property Department was established in 2006 under the structure of the Ministry of Finance. Its main responsibility is the utilization and maintenance of government properties.