The Sindh Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has detected misappropriation of at least Rs 288.860 million in the accounts of the Sindh Education Department over the past years.
At a meeting, presided over by PAC chairman Jam Tamachi Unnar, held in the assembly’s committee room on Thursday, the members reviewed the education department’s audit reports for the fiscal years of 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09.
While reviewing the audit paras, the PAC chairman expressed displeasure over the Sindh Education Department’s officials for not pointing out rampant corruption of millions of rupees under the heads of various projects.
In all, only five paras in the reports were settled by the committee members and 18 deferred until the provision of solid documented proofs of the expenditures.
For the first time, the Sindh chief secretary also participated in the PAC meeting.
In reply to a para stating “in the Education and Literacy secretary office, an amount of Rs 61.200 million was drawn from the Sindh Accountant General office on abstract bill and transferred to various institutions as grant-in-aid without obtaining the detail of expenditure”, Sindh Education Secretary Siddique Memon could not give the committee members a satisfactory answer over the massive irregularities.
From the report of 2007-08, the audit officer read out that an expenditure of Rs 96.177 million was incurred on purchase of 43 vehicles i.e. Toyota Parado, Toyota Hilux, Toyota Hiace, Suzuki Cultus, etc in the Sindh Elementary Teachers Training Project (SETTP) Karachi project director’s office
“The payment was made to M/S Pak-Suzuki Limited and M/S Indus Motors Company Limited without fulfilment of codal requirements,” it was stated.
The Education secretary replied that the matter is under investigation with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the department is also pursuing it very seriously.
In another para, it was mentioned that in the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) Managing Director’s office an amount of Rs 93.795 million was unofficially transferred from PLA (CSSP Programme) to the bank accounts of the project instead of being paid directly to the subordinate offices/suppliers/constructors on account of establishment charges, school support cost (grant-in-aid) and field activities.
Unnar instructed the Education secretary to issue show-cause notices to those involved in these illegal practices and ensure early recovery of the funds misappropriated.
Briefing the committee regarding “irregular expenditure of Rs 28.986 million by SETTP officials without inviting tenders”, Memon said that this matter was also under investigation at the NAB.
The PAC chairman directed the secretary to submit a fresh report of NAB in this regard at the committee’s office.
On his reply to another para on “non-accountable stationery of Rs 8.327 million purchased by SETTP officials”, Unnar directed PAC Secretary Hadi Bux Buriro to write letters to the Sindh chief minister and the governor to take notice of such corruption.
Also not satisfied with the secretary’s reply on “irregular expenditure of Rs 1.848 million by SETTP officials without supporting vouchers”, the PAC chairman directed that letters be written to the departments where the officers involved are working nowadays and the misappropriated amount be mentioned so that the same could be recovered through salary deduction.
