Audit must be about correction

The Business Recorder has been running a series of exclusive stories based on the Audit Report that highlights embezzlements, irregularities and mismanagement in several government ministries as well as in autonomous entities. There is a connect between embezzlement/irregularity/mismanagement and our runaway budget deficits that have not only fuelled inflation but also raised our dependence on external resources, with its associated conditions.
Thus such leakages as identified by the Audit Report are generally acknowledged as one of the reasons for almost routine disabling of many a development project targeted to improving social or physical infrastructure. What must be acknowledged is that the audit reports compiled by the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) are not regarded as partisan and over the years have come to reflect a careful analysis of the accounts of the Federation, the provinces and the accounts of any authority or body established by the Federation or a province, in a transparent and credible manner.
There have been, however, calls for the AGP to prepare audit for years that are immediately preceding the ongoing fiscal year, to ensure that not only is blame ascribed, but the guilty punished instead of having retired and gone well beyond the jurisdiction of law.
The fact that the leakages are significant has surprised no one. The Auditor General has been engaged in unearthing irregularities since its inception, however what has been lacking and continues to be lacking is the formulation of a corrective mechanism with the capacity of ensuring that such leakages do not occur in the future.
The present government has been vocal in stating that the accountability mechanism has been improved as the chairmanship of the powerful Public Accounts Committee (PAC) rests with the Leader of the Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali. His critics have argued to date that Chaudhry Nisar has been selective in identifying the 'small fish' and that the PAC under his leadership has failed to make the 'big fish' accountable for irregularities. Two such cases in recent history come to mind.
First the National Logistics Cell scam, estimated at 4 billion rupees, implicating three former army generals and two civil servants is in limbo awaiting the investigation by the army. The PAC received three reports, including one from the Planning Commission that confirmed violation of rules by the NLC officials, however it decided to wait for the army inquiry - a wait that continues to this day.
Second, auditors identified irregular appointments, incidents of misuse of vehicles and public funds in the Federal Drought Emergency Relief Assistance (Dera) Unit for the financial years 2003-06. Mohammad Anwar, a BS-21 officer of the audit and accounts group, who was the national project director of the FDU during 2003-06 was repeatedly grilled by the PAC and its sub-committee and found guilty of committing wrongs.
However, the PAC's final recommendations were kept pending and Anwar retired from service on May 9, this year. According to a member of the PAC, the committee's final observations on mismanagement in the FDU were delayed to save Anwar, who earlier worked as an assistant auditor general with the Auditor General of Pakistan, Tanvir Ali Agha.
Be that as it may, the responsibility for ensuring that a corrective mechanism is in place rests with the government and not with the PAC. In other words, the federal government needs to turn its attention to a massive albeit routine leakage from the system which, in all probability, implicates few, if any, politicians (the major grouse of our political leadership being that the media targets only the politicians with respect to accountability, instead of the bureaucrats and the army).