PHC moved against misuse of tribal agencies’ funds

PESHAWAR: The People’s Accountability Forum Fata, a non-governmental organisation, has challenged in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) the ‘misuse’ of funds of the tribal agencies and non-implementation of the audit law in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
It is the first time that the issue of alleged corruption, misuse of funds and non-implementation of the audit law extended to Fata in 2011 has been challenged in a court of law.The People’s Accountability Forum Fata head Ghani Gul Mahsud and coordinator Malik Inayatullah Afridi filed the writ petition in the high court through their lawyers Abdul Karim Mahsud and Barrister Zafar Shaheen.
The PHC fixed November 26 for hearing of the writ petition. The federal government, governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, political agents and the additional chief secretary Fata were made respondents in the petition.
The forum claimed in the petition that in 2011 the President of Pakistan through amendments to the Section 27 of the Frontier Crimes Regulation directed that all fines in the tribal agencies should be included in the Agency Welfare Fund.
It was also stated in the petition that the Audit Act had also been extended to the Fata in 2011, but the political agents didn’t even want to talk about the audit of the funds.It said that after the amendment, directives were issued to the administration of the tribal agencies to prepare proper mechanism for annual audit of the funds.
Talking to The News, Ghani Gul Mahsud said that billions of rupees were being collected in tribal areas, but all the funds were issued only on white paper and not through cheque. He said billions of rupees were misappropriated.
“We, the people of Fata, are being deprived of our own funds,” he said, adding that the forum tried to ask the political authorities to implement the audit act in the tribal agencies, but to no avail.
“All the funds meant for the welfare of the people of Fata were at the disposal of political agents. Nobody from the tribal areas or even from government side can ask them how they were spending these huge funds,” he argued.
Ghani Gul Mahsud claimed that if the misuse of the funds meant for the tribal agencies was stopped then Fata would not need allocation of funds for its development projects in the budget. He lamented that successful governments and even Fata parliamentarians had closed their eyes to the massive corruption in the tribal areas. He stated that the people of Fata were being deprived of their rights under the British-era FCR.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Abdul Karim Mahsud, who is also from Fata, told The News that through the petition the people of Fata wanted to know where the billions of rupees earmarked for them went and how the money was spent.