Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, has unanimously directed audit authorities to take total care in making audit objections against government departments and make paras after scrutinizing the concerned record. The meeting of the PAC KP Assembly held in KP House, Abbottabad with MPA Qurban Ali Khan in the chair.
Besides, MPAs, Mahmood Jan Khan, Mohammad Idrees Khattak, Mohammad Ali Shah Bacha and Arbab Wasim Hayat, the Secretary Assembly, Amanullah, Secretary Health Abid Majeed, Vice Chancellor, Khyber Medical University (KMU) Arshad Javed, the Additional Secretary Assembly, Amjad Ali Khan the authorities of law, audit and finance departments also attended. The PAC was of the opinion that wrong audit objections not only put question mark on the performance of departments, rather they also express reservations before the committee. The committee directed the audit authorities to take action against such officials to prevent them from carrying on such practices in the future.
The issue came to limelight during debate on the purchase of Pranko Scope worth over Rs 1.3 million for Medical Teaching Institute (MTI), Khyber Teaching Hospital as audit authorities having looked at the record and correct procedure had accepted their mistake and assured that such mistakes will not be repeated in future. On the assurance of audit officials the members of PAC felt that audit authorities in most audit objections accept their mistakes. Therefore, in future such mistakes should be avoided and stern action taken against such non-serious officials.
The PAC reviewed audit objections of the financial year 2013-14 regarding MTI KTH of Rs 9.628 million and paras of Rs 104.270 million of Khyber Medical University (KMU) and took decisions after detailed debate. The committee after threadbare discussion on the difference of Rs 2.260 million in the patients and OPD slips of KTH accepted that negligence in the provision of record and record keeping. Therefore, the committee unanimously decided to refer the verification of record and identification of the responsible persons to the verification committee of the provincial assembly. Furthermore, the matter of the purchase of 8 surgical equipments over higher rate than lower rate and inflicting a loss of Rs 5.242 million was also referred to a sub-committee of the PAC for further investigation and presentation of report with immediate effect.
During the meeting, the PAC also took notice of the similar opinion of the finance and audit departments on every para and after scathing criticism directed the concerned audit authorities to avoid offering non-serious opinion and shed light on the audit objections of authentic, realistic and solid bases to help the committee in taking correct decision. Similarly, while reviewing audit objections regarding KMU, the PAC reviewed the purchase of PCR machine on higher price and inflicting loss of Rs 1.806 million to the public exchequer and pinpointing incorrect statistics rather the lack of the provision of machine and its software referred the matter to the sub-committee to correct it with transparency.
In the matter of the recovery of a sum of Rs 31.375 million from the affiliation of the public sector colleges with the university, the PAC directed the implementation of the past decisions. The committee directed the recovery of Rs 1.892 million from KTH MTI as audit objections of the audit report 2009-10.
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