ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is considering a proposal aimed at holding principal accounting officers (PAO) responsible for not conducting departmental accounts committees (DAC) meeting regularly, sources said.

The PAC expressed in a number of cases its strong annoyance over non-holding of meetings of the DACs of the federal ministries and departments. It increased the number of pending audit paras before the committee.

In various meetings of the PAC, members committee expressed their annoyance with the bureaucracy for not holding the meetings of the DACs regularly, and said due to incompetence of the bureaucracy, the audit paras that were supposed to be settled at the level of the DACs had landed in the PAC.

The members pointed out that the PAC, in its report, stated that 18,000 audit paras yet to come before the committee, while in total 24,000 audits still pending before the PAC, which was constituted in December 2018.

PAC members are of the view that the quantity of audit paras coming to the PAC suggested that the DACs were not working. A backlog of 10 years was still pending with the subcommittees.

Noor Alam Khan, convener sub-committee stated that he convened meetings of his subcommittee, but no DACs were held on these audit paras, before they came to the committee.

He suggested that the audit paras should also be made against those officials failing to hold DAC meetings. The audit officials alleged that secretary of the ministry or division concerned are bound to convene the meeting of the DACs.

After the finalisation of audit reports, usually the PAOs are requested to organise meetings of the DACs. The DACs in Pakistan deal with the audit-related functions usually performed by the audit committees, and provide a platform for addressing the concerns of the auditors before they are reported to the legislature.

This arrangement increases the cost-effectiveness of the audit process because the adjudication of the legislature is required only in cases that are significant in terms of their financial and systemic implications.

The audit observations are pursued with the PAO at the DAC level, and in all cases, where PAOs do not initiate appropriate action, the audit observations will be brought to the PAC.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020