LAHORE: A report of Auditor General of Pakistan, while exposing the good governance claim in Punjab, has pointed out misappropriation of Rs 127,460,000 in the province’s Agriculture Department.
According to the report, there was no record of an amount of Rs 27,620,000 and nobody knew where it was spent. The report exposed the corruption of delinquent officials of the Agriculture Department point-wise:
The report said that two cars of the department worth Rs 686,000 were stolen from the office premises and no inquiry was conducted.
It adds that the department bought the agriculture machinery against Public Procurement Regulatory Authority’s laws, while daily-wage employees were paid Rs 16,700,000 without the permission of the Finance Division.
A man namely Iftikhar Ahmed Saeed got a job at the Faisalabad Agriculture University on a fake degree. He was detected and removed from the job but Rs 1,600,000 which he received as his salary were never recovered.
Likewise, Rs 628,400,000 from ‘Pattadars’ and Rs 9,900,000 from the employees were not recovered.
The department paid more than Rs 3,400,000 to its high-ups on the account of conveyance allowance when they already had official cars.
Some officials occupied the official residences illegally and without being on the list, causing a loss of Rs 3,000,000 to the national exchequer.
The department while violating the laws, also paid Rs 2,700,000 under different heads.
Six people were appointed as faculty members at Peer Mehr Ali Shah University, Rawalpindi, without the permission of the ministry.
Around 31 retired employees were rehired against the laws.
The department did not use the cultivable land which caused the loss of Rs 15,400,000.
Cars worth Rs 48,900,000 were left rotten by not repairing them.
The report further said, “Audit recommends that the matter be inquired to fix responsibility for non-adherence to PPRA rules and regularisation of the expenditure be sought from the competent authority.
During audit of Agriculture Department, it was observed that daily labour was hired without approval of the Finance Department and without advertisement, in violation of rules, the report added.
Audit was of the view that weak internal controls on appointments resulted in irregular appointments.
The matter was pointed out to the formation during audit conducted in October 2015. The formation just received the observations and did not offer any reply.
