The Auditor General of Pakistan has unearthed irregularities worth Rs 745 million in Tawana Pakistan Project (TPP), aimed at increasing enrolment of school-age girls in poverty stricken areas of the country. According to the audit report, the project is marred by leakage of funds, slow progress, heavy administrative cost and reduction of feeding and medicine cost at the expense of primary objectives of the project.
The project titled Tawana Pakistan was approved by the Executive Committee on National Economic Council (Ecnec) in Sep 2002 at a cost of 3,600 million with a view to increase enrolment of school-age girls between five to 12 years, improve their nutritional status and sustained the attendance of girls in primary schools of 29 selected districts.
The provincial governments of Sindh and Punjab also launched an incentive scheme to improve the literacy rate among the female students for which stipend of Rs 200 per month to every girl is being paid to encourage the parents and girls to attend the school regularly.
According to the report, the majorities of school committees are submitting fictitious figures of beneficiaries to get extra funds because of system weaknesses and improper monitoring of the project.
The management allowed the higher salary package to the contract employees not only in violation of the government instruction but also at the cost of nutrition value/feeding program.
Tawana Pakistan Project faced a loss of Rs 8.25 million on the import of substandard medicines through Unicef. The TPP supplied micronutrients and Albendazole tablets to girls in the schools.
These medicines are common and easily available in Pakistan but the project management purchased 93,820 packets of micronutrients tablets and 21,200 packets of Albendazole tablets through the Unicef on CIF Islamabad basis against advance payment of Rs 6,986,000.
The management also paid demurrage charges to the tune of Rs 897,067 as medicines were not cleared in time while another amount of Rs 364,375 as clearance charges.
The imported micronutrients and Albendazole tablets were administered to the girls in Pakpattan but the concerned school committee reported that immediately after dozes of micronutrients and Albendazole tablets girls experienced stomach problems and vomiting.
National Institute of Health has reported that samples of medicines tested were substandard. Since then, the micronutrients and Albendazole tablets are lying in a store, consequently medicines worth Rs 8.25 million have gone waste.
Moreover, the government faced a loss of Rs 536.08 million in irregular awarding of contract to Agha Khan University (AKU) without inviting open bids. The contract valuing Rs 536.08 million was awarded to the AKU to provide oversight and technical assistance in the execution of the TPP.
Auditor General of Pakistan has said the contract of Rs 536.08 million of the AKU has distorted the project.
It was also observed during the audit that various school nutrition committees had utilised an amount of Rs 175.88 million across the country up to Sep 2003 on feeding of girls in the schools. Baseline data including height and weight of girls was captured before the feeding started.
According to work plan, the AKU was required to record the height and weight of the girls after six months of feeding, but no such activity was undertaken, which was one of the key activities of work plan.
The project management irregularly purchased a vehicle costing Rs 1.56 million in spite of non-approval of the purchase proposal by the Board of Management and without obtaining NOC from the Cabinet Division.
According to the approved PC-I of the TPP, 5,300 schools were to be selected across the country in 29 districts where 530,000 students were to be fed for the two years to improve nutrition status but the project management could not achieve the targets.
According to a survey, achievement rate to feeding of actual number of students and utilisation of funds was 32.6 percent and 34.01 percent respectively.
The report criticises that Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education did not develop any mechanism to monitor the progress of the project. There have been reports of corruption at grassroots level but despite reporting of these incidents to district nutrition committee, no action has been taken.