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CDA Facilitation Centre Ordered to Go Fully Digital After Interior Minister's Surprise Visit
By Mariam Khan
Real Estate Analyst
4 min read
Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi made an unannounced visit to the Capital Development Authority's Facilitation Centre on 7 September 2026, ordering strict action against agents operating on the premises and directing officials to fully digitise the centre's operations after hearing citizen complaints about manual procedures, delays, and repeated visits.
What Citizens Actually Told the Minister
During the visit, several citizens told Naqvi the facilitation system remained largely manual despite complete digitisation never having been achieved, and complained that documents were often not delivered on promised dates, forcing repeated trips back to the centre. The minister also visited the counter designated for senior citizens, reviewing the facilities available to elderly visitors and directing staff to handle their cases on a priority basis without delay.
What Naqvi Specifically Directed
Naqvi took direct notice of agents operating inside the centre, stating plainly that no agent should be visible inside the facility, and ordered a comprehensive crackdown against their presence. He expressed clear displeasure over long queues, overcrowding, and extended waiting times across different counters, directing officials to construct additional counters and carry out building renovation to improve visitor flow and service delivery. On documents specifically, he directed that timely delivery on scheduled dates be strictly ensured going forward. He assured citizens that visible improvement in the centre's operations would be achieved within one month.
This Is Not the First Time This Exact Reform Has Been Promised
This directive is not the Facilitation Centre's first announced digitisation push, and that history matters for understanding how seriously to weigh this latest promise. Earlier in the year, under the CDA's own stated initiative, the authority had already announced a comprehensive strategy specifically built around financial management, cashless transactions, and computerisation and digitisation of CDA land records, framed at the time as a direct response to lessons learned and citizen feedback, and explicitly intended to make documentation, fees, and processes easier to access in both English and Urdu. That earlier announcement, made under CDA's previous chairman, appears not to have been fully delivered, given that citizens were still describing the centre as largely manual when Naqvi visited in September.
Why the Presence of Agents Specifically Draws Concern
An informal agent economy operating inside a public facilitation centre typically reflects a genuine gap in service accessibility, citizens turning to intermediaries, often for a fee, specifically because navigating the formal system directly has proven difficult, slow, or unclear. Naqvi's explicit focus on eliminating agents alongside the digitisation push suggests officials view the two problems as connected, a fully digital, transparent system being the intended structural fix that removes the underlying need for informal facilitation in the first place.
What Remains to Be Seen
Naqvi's one month timeline for visible improvement is a specific, near term deadline against which this directive can genuinely be measured, a meaningfully shorter window than the more general, undated commitment made earlier in the year. Given that an earlier digitisation announcement did not fully resolve these same complaints, sustained follow through, rather than the announcement itself, will determine whether this specific effort produces a genuinely different outcome.
What This Means for Anyone Using CDA's Facilitation Centre
Residents, property owners, and businesses needing CDA services should watch for confirmation of actual, functioning digital processes at the Facilitation Centre over the coming month specifically, given the minister's stated timeline, rather than assuming immediate improvement based on the visit and directive alone. Anyone currently relying on an agent to navigate CDA processes should be aware that the authority has been explicitly directed to eliminate that practice, meaning it would be reasonable to expect increased scrutiny of agent activity at the centre in the near term, and to attempt direct engagement with official channels going forward rather than continuing to rely on informal intermediaries.