Financial irregularities worth Rs 26.796 billion have been found in the financial accounts of Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) during the last six years, according to the audit report tabled before the Public Accounts Committee.
The PAC met on Friday under the chairmanship of Nadeem Afzal Gondal. Members of the committee Yasmeen Rehman, Begum Shahnaz Sheikh and Noor Alam Khan were also present.
The committee directed the management of WAPDA to expedite the reconciliation of amounts recovered through confiscation of performance guarantees of all the purchase orders and also ordered to fix responsibility on those responsible.
Discussing the audit para regarding the loss of Rs 510.795 million due to non-replacement of sub-standard and rejected foreign material, the committee directed the management to explain the latest status of the replacement of rejected material/recovery of the cost paid and asked why the payment was released without proper inspection of the material supplied.
The committee also directed the management to explain the reasons why payments were made without properly inspecting the material and fix the responsibility within one month.
The WAPDA official told the committee that M/s Siemens Pakistan Engineering Company was asked to furnish warranty of material and arrange pre-installation of inspection of all blades on their own expenses.
He said a meeting had been held with Siemens representatives and final response was awaited and would be intimated to the committee.
To another para regarding loss of revenue of Rs 1,987.356 million due to non-recovery of fines, the PAC directed the management to expedite the recovery of amount debited and also intimate the outcome of realization of amount debited after re-verification of audit notes. The WAPDA official said all the pointed out amount had been debited to the consumers and the recovery amounting to Rs 5.641 million was under process and the issue of non-debiting of audit notes was discussed in the meeting of the HESCO CEO, wherein it was brought to light that certain audit notes not based on justified grounds, which were primarily not checked by the officers concerned and agreed due to rush of work, which required re-verification jointly by the officers concerned and audit.
The official said after such verification, the amount of justified audit notes should be debited immediately.
