ISLAMABAD – The government, the 18th Amendment Implementation Commission and the Inter-Provincial Coordination Ministry have so far failed to devise a mechanism to settle previous years’ audit objections of the devolved ministries and their attached departments.
Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) fear that legal and technical hitches in the process may cause a loss of billions to the national exchequer unless the mechanism is devised in time. Like many other complications and problems which have surfaced after the devolution of around 10 federal ministries in the first two phases, the confusion over settling of audit objections of the previous years of the devolved ministries has not been addressed by the 18th Amendment Implementation Commission yet.
“This is the problem for which a mechanism should be evolved at the earliest as no federal department or ministry is ready to inherit the audit objections of devolved ministries. Under the Rules of Business 1973, provincial governments and departments are answerable to the provincial PAC for the finances released by the respective provincial governments and not for federal government accounts,” a top official said.
He said in the coming days, the PAC or its sub-committees would be unable to take up the audit objections regarding the financial embezzlement and misappropriation of funds of the ministries of Population Welfare, Youth Affairs, Local Government and Rural Development, Special Initiatives, Zakat and Ushr, Education, Culture, Social Welfare and Special Education, Tourism, Livestock and Dairy Development as there was no principal accounting officer (secretary of the ministry) of those ministries.
He said the PAC could also not take up the audit objections of the previous years of the above mentioned ministries as their previous finances belonged to the federal government. “The audit objections as traced by the Auditor General of Pakistan worth billions of rupees on the devolved ministries particularly Local Government, Special Initiatives, Zakat and Ushr, Education and Social Welfare are still unsettled in the books,” he added.
Complications in this regard have started hitting the PAC functioning as the meeting of the monitoring and implementation committee of the PAC, which was scheduled on April 5 to review the compliance on PAC directives on accounts of the Ministry of Culture for the years 1996-97, 1999-2000, 2000-2001, 2005-06, 2008-09 was deferred in the absence of any official from the Culture Ministry.
Yasmeen Rehman, member PAC and convenor of the monitoring and implementation committee said the PAC Secretariat had received a letter from Cabinet Division Secretary Nargis Sethi on April 7 in which she stated that the mechanism was being evolved in consultation with 18th Amendment Implementation Commission Chairman Raza Rabbani.
“They would also have consultations with PAC Chairman Nisar Ali Khan in this regard,” she said, adding that in her personal opinion audit objections of the devolved ministries should be settled by the PAC of the National Assembly as the provincial PACs were neither strong enough nor familiar with those audit objections to settle them. “The legal issues also bar provincial PACs to settle audit objections on the finances of the federal government,” Yasmeen said.
Asked who would be answerable to the National Assembly’s PAC when there would be no secretaries, she said the top most officials of the subsidiaries of the devolved ministries which had been placed under the Economic Affairs Division, Planning Commission, Establishment Division and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could be asked to represent their ministries.
Another official of the Cabinet Division said the NA PAC should complete the settling of audit objections of the already devolved and would-be devolved ministries on a priority basis before June 30 to avert further legal and technical obstacles otherwise it would be left with no option but to delete all such audit paragraphs.
“Under the Rules of Business 1973, provincial PACs cannot check the federal government’s accounts and finances, current or previous, while the NA PAC cannot settle the provincial governments’ accounts and finances,” he said. A source in the Inter-provincial Coordination Ministry said the ministry was working to evolve a mechanism to solve the problem. Expressing serious concerns over the situation, another member of the PAC, Nadeem Afzal Chan said the 18th Amendment Implementation Commission had so far not evolved any mechanism in this regard.
“We have asked the commission to evolve a mechanism without any delay,” he said, adding that the previous years’ audit objects of the devolved ministries could not be sent to the provincial PACs as they could not settle accounts of the federal government legally.
