Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Friday issued stern directives to the government organizations to ensure enforcement of financial discipline for bringing transparency in their accounts. The meeting of the PAC KP Assembly held in the KP House, Abbottabad. MPA Qurban Ali Khan presided over the meeting that continued for the last 27 days at the same venue.
Deputy Speaker Dr Meher Taj Roghani, MPAs: Mahmood Jan Khan, Mohammad Ali Shah Bacha, Mohammad Idrees Khattak, Arbab Wasim Hayat, Auditor Syed Asad Shah, Secretary, Assembly, Amanullah Khan and Additional Secretary KP Assembly, Amjad Ali Khan, and the administrative heads of seventeen departments attended the meeting. The committee disposed of eleven different audit objections regarding irregularities and misappropriations in the Rs 87.803 million expenditure of Communication and Works Department in different projects.
During the PAC meeting, audit objections relating to irregularities and embezzlement in the expenditures of various departments came under discussion and decisions including recovery from the responsible officers and contractors were also taken. It was revealed at the meeting that though Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department, Tank, during financial year 2008-9 had spent an amount of Rs 10.5 million in the head of repair and maintenance (R&M), but the department lacked documentary record, in this regard.
The chair of the meeting took stern notice of the situation and said that the lack of the provision of record by the audit authorities again and again had breached the privilege of the committee, therefore, the committee declared the suspected expenditure of Rs 10.5 million as embezzlement of the public exchequer. It also called for recovery of the amount from the responsible officers and registration of FIR against them.