Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly on Monday directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report on 414 missing passports in Manchester Consulate General within two months.
The PAC meeting chaired by Malik Allahyar Khan was examining the Audit Reports related to Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Years 1997-98 and 2000-01. The Audit had pointed out that that particulars of 584 passports were not mentioned in numerical register. The Audit pointed out that this caused Rs1.608 million loss to the national exchequer.
Secretary Foreign Affairs Riaz Muhammad Khan being the Principal Accounting Officer of the ministry, said that audit has verified that out of 584 passport mentioned in the para 170 original application forms have been retrieved from the disarranged heap of the mission. He opined that the other application form should be lying in the heap due to understaffing the mission could not arrange the record.
Some of the members of PAC advised him to computerise the whole record of the ministry. While examining an audit para regarding fund raising by Consulate of Pakistan in Glasgow for a film on the Quaid-i-Azam by Professor Akbar Ahmed, the PAC advised that the officials of Pakistan Mission should not be directly involved in such activities in future. "Office of the High Commissioner or the Consulates should not be involved in such activities in future", said Malik Allahyar Khan.
Riaz Muhammad Khan said that the Mission had only provided assistance to the sponsors of the project to raise funds from the public and these funds were duly passed over by the mission. On this the PAC chairman said that foreign missions should cooperate with the Pakistani community but should not involve in fund-raising process themselves.
About an audit para on non-production of account of receipt books, the PAC said that it was the duty of the Principal Accounting Officers to ensure that all relevant record is provided to the visiting Audit teams in time. The Foreign Secretary informed that he has already issued directions in this connection.
The PAC members who attended the meeting included Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Professor Asia Azeem, Qurban Ali Shah, Abdul Ghaffar Jatoi, Kanwar Khalid Younis,Colonel (retd) Ghulam Rasool Sahi and Ali Akbar Wains.