Rs15m bogus ad cheques case sent to NAB, PAC told

ISLAMABAD: The information ministry Wednesday informed the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that it had sent a case of Rs15 million bogus advertisement bills to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
The NAB representative initially expressed ignorance about any pending investigation; however, when Secretary Information Muhammad Azam showed the file to the committee at the conclusion of the meeting, the NAB representative admitted that investigations were in progress at the request of the ministry.
Chaired by Syed Khursheed Shah, the committee discussed audit paras concerning the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage for the financial year 2009-10.
Azam told the committee that cheques were issued against bogus bills, but the AGPR referred them to the NAB.
The committee was told that a proposal was under way to impose radio tax at the time of registration of a new car and purchase of a new cellphone to ease out the financial crisis of the state-own Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) but so far no decision had been taken in this regard.
Audit officials told the committee that despite receiving Rs5 billion from the power consumers in the head of license fees and earning Rs3 billion from advertisements, the state-owned Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) was still facing Rs800 million losses.
MD Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation Imran Gardezi said Radio Pakistan was getting grant-in-aid of Rs3.7 billion from the government out of which Rs1 billion was spent on pensions annually.
Gardezi said he had take charge of the PBC recently and was formulating a policy to improve the financial position of his department.The committee gave him two months to inform it about the financial position of the state-owned radio.
PAC member Mehmood Khan Achakzai questioned why people don’t listen to the state-owned radio.Managing Director PTV Muhammad Malick told the PAC that the departments of marketing and programme had been reactivated and a new technology was being introduced that will help control the losses.
Auditors told the committee that the PTV management had paid Rs141.912 million bonus to all its employees, including the MD, during 2008-09 and 2009-10 despite financial losses.The corporation sustained operating losses of Rs1.006 billion and Rs287.921 million during the year 2008-09 and 2009-10 respectively and as such bonus was not admissible.
In its reply, the PTV management said during the period 2008-09 and 2009-10 ex-gratias to the employees were paid with the approval of the then chairman (PTV) and secretary information ministry which had also been approved by the board of directors.The committee also sought the record of appointments and domiciles of press information officers at the Pakistan Mission abroad.