As many as 146 former/incumbent ministers including Khurshid Shah, Naveed Qamar, Rehman Malik, Raza Hayat Hirraj, Farooq Sattar and Rehmatullah Kakar and government officials such as Saeed Mehdi, Malik Asif Hayat and Tariq Iqbal Puri are defaulters of Overseas Employment Corporation (OEC)’s Travel Division to the tune of Rs 1.8 million to just Rs 5,000 for years, and some of them have shockingly failed to clear their outstanding dues since as far back as 1986.
Official documents exclusively available with Pakistan Today reveal that these ‘millionaire’ politicians and bureaucrats bought air tickets on credit from OEC Travel Division – currently a subsidiary of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), which had been working under the Ministry of Labour and Manpower until the latter’s devolution under the 18th Amendment – but later did not bother depositing amounts on due dates, causing a total loss of Rs 8.3 million to the corporation.
Interestingly, in most of the cases the outstanding amounts against parliamentarians and bureaucrats are small, but they are enough to prove the country’s elite’s habitual carelessness towards the national exchequer and institutions.
The names of prominent defaulter parliamentarians (incumbent or former) and the amount outstanding against them is as follows: former labour minister Syed Khurshid Shah, who is now the religious affairs minister, owes Rs 844,419 (official debt) and Rs 1,109,329 (personal debt); former overseas Pakistanis minister Dr Farooq Sattar owes Rs 39,760; Interior Minister Rehman Malik owes Rs 19,850 (in his capacity as former FIA director); former housing and works minister Rehamatullah Kakar owes Rs 38,595; Water And Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar owes Rs 24,810; former adviser to the PM Nawabzada Ghazanfar Ali Gul owes Rs 7,924; Minister of State for Housing And Works Raza Hayat Hirraj owes Rs 32,365; former Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) minister Malik Mukhtar Ahmed Awan owes Rs 77,440; former minister Amanullah Gichki owes Rs 41,310; former minister Nasir Ali Khan Baloch owes Rs 5,160; former minister Mian M Zaman owes Rs 5,445; former minister Ghulam Murtaza Jatoi owes Rs 6,600; Mir Haji Tareen owes Rs 3,160; former minister Qasim Ali Shah owes Rs 6,085 and former minister Nisar A Ghumman owes Rs 23,030.
A source in the ministry of HRD told Pakistan Today that the OEC managing director had presented the list of defaulters to State Minister for HRD Sheikh Waqas Akram on the latter’s orders. “Upon receiving the list, the minister of state has ordered OEC high-ups to recover the sum at the earliest through legal means,” said the source, adding that the minister of state had also told the OEC managing director to consider penalising old defaulters who had not paid outstanding dues for decades. The minister’s letter to the managing director also expressed displeasure over the sluggish debt recovery mechanism of the corporation.
An official of the OEC who asked not to be named said that the corporation was unable to recover outstanding dues as the defaulters were “powerful people”. “We have sent them requests and reminders but there is no response from the other side. Some of them claim that the ministries/organisations in which they were working would pay the dues,” he added.
Prominent government officials (retired or in-service) who are defaulters of OEC’s Travel Division include former labour and manpower secretary Malik Asif Hayat – now secretary to President Asif Ali Zardari – who owes Rs 6,056; Dr Abdul Hameed Janani owes Rs 316,230; Muhib Ali Pulpoto owes Rs 23,717; former Board of Emigration and Overseas Employment DG Umar Morio owes Rs 44,751; Customs Intelligence DG Muhammad Riaz owes Rs 36,619; Former Customs DG Maj General (r) Syed Usman Shah owes Rs 8,120; Tariq Iqbal Puri owes Rs 7,275; former OEC MD Saeed Mehdi owes Rs 30,000 and former OEC MD Imran Qadir owes Rs 63,625.
Some private companies, including travel agencies, are also on the OEC Travel Division’s defaulter list: M/S Leading Travel owes Rs 138.676; M/S Karwan e Al Safeer owes Rs 40,000; M/S Overseas Express Karachi owes Rs 271,029; M/S Prince Travel Ltd owes Rs 213,342 and M/S Ittefaq Foundry owes Rs 5,475. The now dysfunctional Ministry of Labour and Manpower has to clear outstanding dues to the tune of Rs 156,825 while the Foreign Affairs Ministry has still not paid back Rs 210,555 to the OEC Travel Division.
