Chairman PTI, Imran Khan, Monday stated he was astounded by the AGP revelations of Rs 980bn worth of embezzlement, misappropriation and other irregularities in the power sector for the year 2012-2013. This has been discovered in the accounts of WAPDA and other power companies working under the Ministry of Water and Power showing that the entire power structure has been suffering from pervasive corruption and mismanagement. Khan expressed the fear that even today these entities continue to function in a questionable and non-transparent fashion which is why the energy crisis continues to get aggravated.
Khan demanded that all those guilty should immediately be arrested and held accountable – beginning from the top and going down the chain of command of the bureaucracy. No one should be spared. Khan made clear that unless those indulging in corrupt practices and fraud are punished, merely exposing fraud and corruption will not change anything. Khan concluded that the time has come to expose and hold accountable all those who have defrauded the nation of public taxpayer money.
Khan pointed out that the amount of Rs 980 bn, is equal to almost one-fourth of the Rs 4 trillion 2015-2016 federal budget, as has been pointed out in the media. Khan said the fact that this mega scale corruption was hidden for two years is just one more proof of the PPP-PMLN muk muqa that has allowed the leaders of these two parties to rob the country with no fear of accountability.
Khan also drew attention to the AGP observations that Rs 4.2 trillion is additionally outstanding in an unsettled audit backlog from the past few years before the 2012-2013 audit.
Equally shameful, Khan said, was that the WAPDA Directorate general of Audit which is supposed to look after the power sector accounts, admitted to having deliberately ignored misappropriation, fraud and other irregularities in cases of less than Rest 1 million each! In FY 2012-2013, according to the Directorate itself, 184 cases of irregular expenditures, rule violations and unjustified payments were discovered amounting to Rest 368.65 billion. The revelations about non-recoveries, overpayments, costs resulting from accidents and negligence, weaknesses in internal control mechanisms and so on show an organizational structure that is decaying because of corruption, fraud and overall mismanagement.
