Corruption in Lahore municipality

THE proceedings of the meeting of the Lahore Municipal Committee proved to the hilt the charge that rank corruption prevails in the administration of the municipality. Nearly three weeks ago, the government addressed the municipality on the subject, inviting attention to the charges of maladministration and corruption made against its employees in the Press and enquiring whether the municipality had any reason to believe that those charges were well-founded. The committee, while denying the charges and characterising them as false and the result of an organised malicious and mischievous campaign against itself, appointed two of its subordinate officials to prepare a memorandum of all cases in which its employees had been punished for corruption in one form or another during the previous six years. At the same time, the Secretary was asked to submit a report with regard to all charges of corruption and mal-administration against municipal employees which might have occurred during his brief term of office and come to his notice. Both reports were presented to the committee at its meeting held on Wednesday, though the request of the Press to be supplied with copies of those reports was refused. Now what do these reports, prepared not by an outside and independent agency after a full and open inquiry in which all parties have an opportunity of being heard but by its own officials, disclose? The report of the Secretary, who was reluctantly appointed to the task at the suggestion of the government, mentioned several cases of alleged corruption in which the municipality failed to take proper action.