ISLAMABAD – The Punjab government has not been able to recover over Rs 574 million from the officers/officials and contractors of the Punjab Food Directorate, mainly owing to its ineffective and insufficient recovery mechanism, points out an AGPR audit report for the year 2009-10.
The report reveals Rs 574.847 million were recoverable from a number of officers, officials and contractors of the Punjab Food Directorate. The scrutiny of the directorate’s monthly recovery statements reveals that Rs 22.271 million were recoverable from 44 in-service officers and officials.
No concrete efforts were made to recover the amount except declaring that the recovery be made as the arrears of land revenue, though it could be deducted from the salaries of the officers/officials concerned. For this purpose, the DDOs concerned were to install computer changes in the accounts office concerned, but they failed to do so.
The report further reveals that Rs 69.158 million were recoverable from the 76 people who have expired. Similarly, Rs 3O3.816 million were recoverable from the 190 officers/officials dismissed from service, and Rs 108.442 million were outstanding against 72 officers/officials already retired from service.
The DDOs did not recover the amount from the pensions of the retired officials through AG Punjab/district accounts offices. And the food directorate never asked the DDOs to explain the reasons for the non-recovery of the government dues.
In addition, Rs 37.301 million were outstanding against 31 different agencies such as Rs27.315 million from the health department against rent of godowns since 1999. Out of the remaining amount, Rs 1.027 million were recoverable from Muhammad Aslam, a transport contractor from RY Khan; Rs 2.874 million from Muhammad Iqbal, a contractor from DG Khan; and Rs747,880 from M/s AI-Noor Flour Mills Gujranwala.
Moreover, the 22 cases amounting to Rs 7.289 million submitted by the field offices to the food directorate during 1985-2007 for write-off have not been decided so far. Disciplinary proceedings against 12 officers and officials have not been finalised despite the lapse of many years. Another 22 cases of Rs 34.165 million are pending in different courts.
At the time of audit all the three posts of tehsildars, one each in Lahore, Multan and Bahawalpur, were vacant, hampering the pace of recovery. Since 2006, monthly meetings were held to review the progress of recovery, but after that nothing was done and no steps were taken for proper monitoring and recovery.
