The restructuring of National Highway Authority (NHA) is on the cards and the Ministry of Finance will call National Highway Council's meeting on the matter shortly, said the Secretary Ministry of Finance. Dr Waqar Masood was critical about the financial mismanagement in NHA when he said that no repayment of interest or capital amount have been made by the authority for a long time.
"The management of authority implemented only those directives of government which are generous to them," he remarked. Government has already been facing financial crunch and it did not have funds to release to NHA to buy lands for execution of their projects, he said.
Countering the secretary finance arguments at Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Secretary Ministry of communication, Anwar Ahmed Khan warned that the escalation cost of development projects worth Rs 620 billion of NHA would reach Rs 2000 billion if government did not release the funds in stipulated time. The Secretary Ministry of Communication further said that annual budget of the Ministry was between Rs 35 to 45 billion in previous years. After the cut in Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), the releases of ministry stood at Rs 18 billion in recent years. Even they did not receive Rs 22 billion ie, estimated cost of damages pertaining to highways and bridges during flood last year, he said.
While reviewing the project grants of NHA, PAC noticed huge irregularities and corruption. PAC called a special committee meeting of the authority for a briefing on overall project financing of NHA. Chairman PAC, Chaudhry Nisar Ali said that the irregularities at grass roots level in ministries and other government departments is a reflection of failure of the ministry of finance to play role of a monitoring body. He suggested," the Ministry of Finance must play its constitutional role like Ombudsman to stop the leakage in budget in shape of irregularities and corruption", he said.
Auditor General of Pakistan criticised the Planning and Development Division to continue following the process of approving development projects. He recommended the PAC to issue directives to Planning Division to stop holding Central Development Working Party (CDWP) meetings in future. He further recommended end to the throw-forward of the projects when funds are not available. This could save the government from escalating cost of the development projects and bring the expenditure under some fiscal discipline, he said.
The PAC took one step ahead and recommended the government to recover the amount from the annual budget of those ministries and government departments, which failed in making recoveries pointed out by the audit.
The PAC also reviewed the implementation status of its early directives to Pakistan Railways while dealing with audit accounts of year 2007-08. Secretary Ministry of Railways, Raja Shahid said a committee had been constituted to prepare a plan with the recomendations how to make railways automated so that irregularities could be identified in future. Chairman PAC suggested that for the revival of railways, a strategic policy should be prepared in consultation with all the political parties.
He further ordered the PAC to write letters to Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior to keep a check on their subsidiaries for illegal occupation of lands of railways and un-authorised lease of railways land for commercial use and also directed the railways to review the ridiculously low level rent of the land.