The mystery of CPQL; how a national biosecurity project became a bureaucratic black hole

ISLAMABAD: An inquiry into the decades-long non-operationalisation of the Central Plant Quarantine Laboratory (CPQL) has finally concluded, prompting Prime Minister Mian Shehbaz Sharif to order disciplinary action against senior officials of the Ministry of National Food Security & Research (MoNFS&R) and the Department of Plant Protection (DPP), citing severe administrative inefficiencies, professional negligence, and planning failures.

Conceived in 2001 with Chinese financial and technical assistance, CPQL was intended to be a national biosecurity facility to safeguard Pakistan’s agricultural exports from invasive pests, and to ensure compliance with the World Trade Organization’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards. 

By 2005, its state-of-the-art building was completed and sophisticated lab equipment installed. However, the recently concluded inquiry report, a copy of which is available with Profit, shows that twenty years later, the lab remains unopened, its equipment obsolete, and its purpose unfulfilled. Despite the initial vision to host six specialised diagnostic sections—including virology, mycology, bacteriology, nematology, and molecular diagnostics—the facility somehow never moved past its physical completion.

The inquiry committee, appointed by the Prime Minister and comprising former Federal Secretary Mr. Shahid Khan, Secretary MoNFS&R Mr. Waseem Ajmal Chaudhry, Special Secretary Commerce Mr. Shakeel Mangnejo, and senior scientist Dr. Shahid Mansoor, has unearthed a story of consistent bureaucratic inertia. 

Over the years, seven proposals for CPQL’s revival were initiated between 2004 and 2024. Despite approvals, allocated budgets, and even international support such as the World Bank-funded LEAFS project, none of these efforts translated into operational readiness. A combination of delayed procurement, repeated failure to recruit essential staff, and shifting jurisdictional responsibilities—particularly following the 18th Amendment devolving agricultural responsibilities to provinces—ensured the project remained dormant.

What’s awe striking about the CPQL debacle is that critical equipment, including ten Chinese-supplied fumigation chambers valued at over Rs. 69 million, was never put to use. In fact, international phytosanitary practices had already evolved beyond generic fumigation approaches by the time the chambers arrived, rendering them outdated. Yet, no corrective steps were taken. 

The report also highlights that recruitment efforts spanning over a decade were marred by red tape, unapproved interview minutes, and mysteriously missing documentation. Applications were received, interviews were held, yet nobody was hired.

Meanwhile officials from DPP and MoNFS&R failed to adapt to shifting global standards, particularly the need to separate inspection, testing, and certification roles within plant protection services. This has been attributed to a lot of causes like the continuous posting of non-technical officials on key posts.

These structural oversights, left unaddressed for years, left Pakistan’s capacity for independent, reliable testing of plant-based commodities compromised. Even when the department shifted toward outsourcing, a lack of strategic vision prevented the integration of existing government infrastructure, and the fumigation chambers along with other CPQL equipment stayed put – unused- in multiple cities across the country.

The committee, while not being able to unearth any financial embezzlement, has pinned the failure on years of professional negligence and a lack of institutional accountability. 

A list of high-ranking officials, including several former federal secretaries, additional secretaries, director generals, and directors, has been identified for their roles in the project’s stagnation. Those named include Muhammad Ismail Qureshi (2004–2007), Zia ur Rehman (2007–2010), Seerat Asghar Jaura (2013–2016), Abid Javid (2016–2017), Hashim Popalzai (2018–2020), Ghufran Memon (2020–2022), and Zafar Hassan (2022–2023), among others. These officers were responsible for policy direction, budget approvals, and oversight, and are now facing the possibility of show-cause notices issued via the Establishment Division.

Also implicated are several former Directors General of DPP—Mr. Allah Rakha Asi, Dr. Tasneem Ahmed, Mr. Muhammad Ikhlaque Rana (late), Dr. Mubarak Ahmed, S.M. Imran Shami, Dr. Waseem ul Hassan, Dr. Falak Naz, Mr. Allah Ditta Abid, and Dr. Muhammad Tariq Khan—who either failed to initiate staffing, allowed equipment to become defunct, or repeatedly sought revisions of the proposals for revival without any meaningful implementation.

Controversy has also arisen around Mr. Rashid Mehmood Langrial, currently serving as Chairman FBR, who during his tenure as Additional Secretary (Planning) in MoNFS&R reportedly turned down DPP’s proposal for CPQL’s operationalisation and advised reliance on external labs. Critics within the ministry argue this was a key turning point that shifted focus away from CPQL’s institutional development. 

Furthermore, officials such as Mr. Akbar Zardari, Mr. Shahid Abdullah, and Mr. Muhammad Sohail Shahzad—directors of technical and quarantine units—have been served notices for failing to maintain critical documentation and ensure basic laboratory upkeep. Some individuals, however, were conspicuously left out of the accountability list despite having held relevant posts. Insiders claim the omission of names like Dr. Qasim Khan Kakar, Mr. Safdar Ali, and Mr. Azam Khan may be due to political influence and internal lobbying.

A particularly disturbing aspect of the report involves the loss of critical records during the devolution of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MINFA) in 2011. Key files related to funding, recruitment, and planning disappeared, and the inquiry has identified Mr. Arif Tehsin (now Additional Secretary in GB), Mr. Hussain Jaffar (former Director Admin, DPP), and Mr. Muzaffar Iqbal (retired Deputy Director, P&D) as being responsible for these record-keeping failures. They too face disciplinary proceedings.

A former entomologist at the DPP, criticised the inquiry committee for holding some officials from the DPP and the MoNFSR responsible, while exempting others without clearly specifying or justifying the reasons for their exemption. He termed the inquiry biased, unjustified, and a deliberate attempt to shield favored individuals (“blue-eyed officials”) while unfairly targeting others—possibly innocent—simply to appease the Prime Minister.

He further added that when the federal government had already allowed private companies to handle disinfestation and fumigation of importable and exportable commodities—registered with the DPP under specific terms and conditions and upon payment of fees as outlined in Annexure I read with Rule 31 of the Pakistan Plant Quarantine Rules, 1967—the responsibility of DPP in fumigation was already minimized. 

The fact that fumigation was being handled through container-based systems, and that an unqualified, non-technical Director General had proposed this ill-conceived project, raises serious doubts. Given these circumstances, the inquiry committee and the Prime Minister holding DPP officials accountable while exempting later officials from responsibility for the non-operationalization of the fumigation chambers appears inconsistent and unjustified.

A former Director General pointed out that containers used for import and export already come equipped with built-in fumigation systems. Shifting the commodities from containers to DPP’s fumigation chambers, and then transferring them back, makes the process unnecessarily expensive, laborious, time-consuming, and impractical—especially for treating over a thousand containers daily. 

This rendered the use of fumigation chambers effectively obsolete. Therefore, including these chambers in the CPQL project clearly suggests that the authorities involved in drafting and approving the project lacked knowledge of relevant laws and global plant quarantine and pre-shipment practices in use since 2001.

He added that the functionalisation of CPQL requires the appointment of several additional technical experts. If successive secretaries of MINFA and MoNFSR (being the appointing authorities), secretaries of P&D (being the project approval authorities), and secretaries of finance (being responsible for the provision of funds), along with the federal government (having final approval powers), failed to appoint the required workforce, then how can the current secretaries and federal authorities hold junior technical officials or the Director General accountable? These officials neither had the authority to approve the project, nor the mandate to release funds or appoint staff.

Sources in DPP and MoNFSR revealed that a number of non-technical officers have been posted as Director General, DPP, till date, all in clear violation of Articles V and VII of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and the Civil Servant Rules, from 2001. Moreover, the post of Director Technical was deliberately kept vacant for over a decade to accommodate favorites—despite them lacking the required qualifications in Entomology, Plant Protection, or Plant Pathology, and relevant experience in plant quarantine and pre-shipment inspection. 

This led to the inclusion of equipment in the project that the DPP was never able to use. The technical officials now being targeted, many of whom joined after 2017 when CPQL had already become obsolete, cannot logically be held responsible for the failures of the past.

The arbitrary selection of officials from MoNFSR and DPP for misconduct and inefficiency, without clear criteria, while exempting others who held the same positions, raises serious concerns about the integrity of the inquiry officers and the transparency of the entire process.

Adding to the controversy, some officials accused in the report argue that holding them accountable years after retirement—some having left service over a decade ago—is both legally tenuous and ethically questionable. As per Supreme Court rulings and Civil Service rules, disciplinary action cannot typically be initiated against retired federal servants after one year if they are not involved in corruption, and the enquiry report rules out any corruption in CPQL project. 

Furthermore, disciplinary measures against officers who served on deputation from other organizations in DPP, such as the Sindh Agriculture Department or PARC, or University of Agriculture, Dera Gazi Khan, Balochistan Agriculture Research Institute (ARI), Quetta must be referred to their parent departments under E&D rules because the federal government can initiate disciplinary proceedings only against civil servants.

A senior official from MoNFS&R, requesting anonymity, claimed that current DPP leadership—manipulated the list of officials submitted to the inquiry committee, excluding their favourite individuals and targeting those with whom they allegedly had professional rivalries with.

Though the report does not indict anyone for financial corruption, it reveals a deeply troubling pattern of inefficiency and mis-governance. The committee has recommended a feasibility study to assess CPQL’s future, the immediate recruitment and training of technical staff, replacement of obsolete equipment, exploration of public-private partnerships, and the establishment of a dedicated oversight mechanism. Without these corrective steps, CPQL risks remaining a symbol of institutional failure rather than a beacon of agricultural biosecurity.