The parliamentarians from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were unable to supervise development projects in their respective constituencies because of the security threats in the reigon, additional chief secretary FATA informed PAC’s special committee II meeting.
The members of the committee had asked him to consult local parliamentarians before launching any development schemes in the area. He said, therefore, there was no need to get them on board.
The special committee II of the Public Accounts Committee took serious notice on the reformulation of policies, rules and regulation by autonomous bodies and asked Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani to ensure formulation of uniform policies of all public sector organizations whether they were enjoying autonomous status or not.
The committee, which met with Zahid Hamid in the chair to review audit objections of FATA secretariat, cabinet division, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), observed that the so-called autonomous institutions used to formulate their rules and regulations without getting approval from finance ministry and other concerned authorities. The audit officials told the committee that the policies adopted by those autonomous also did not match with one another. They further informed the committee that a three- member board setup in PTA used to take unilateral decisions which were later approved by the ministry of law.
The audit officials informed the committee that it had become a routine habit of finance division to lend incentives to such departments on the basis of its like and dislikes. The PAC directed all autonomous departments to finalize their documents with regard to formulation of rules and regulations and submit them to committee.
While reviewing audit objection of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), the committee directed CII high-ups to recover Rs 0.2 million from Former Chairman CII Dr SM Zaman within one month which he had drawn as TA/DA illegally.
