close
Thursday March 28, 2024

Sindh govt depts ignored 88pc PAC directives in 17 years

By Imdad Soomro
February 14, 2019

KARACHI: The Sindh government’s almost all departments avoided to comply with the 88 percent directions of Public Account Committees (PAC) in 17 years from 1992 to 2010. The situation has been revealed in official correspondence of Sindh government and in a recent audit report of Auditor General of Pakistan.

According to the official record of Auditor General of Pakistan and Sindh government correspondence accessed by The News, the Public Accounts Committees (PACs) of five provincial assemblies of Pakistan People’s Party government and allied governments of PML-N, PML-F and MQM from 1992 to 2010 made 1012 directives to the 24 Sindh government departments by pointing out the corruption, financial mismanagement and irregularities of billions of rupees and asked the departments to inquire the matters in detail, fix the responsibility upon the involved persons and report to the Public Accounts Committees (PAC); but out of 1012 directives Sindh government departments made compliance of only 128 (12 percent) directives and 884 (88 percent) directives remained unattended.

In this regard Sindh Assembly Secretary GM Umar Farooq Buriro through an official letter copy of which is exclusively available with The News, pointed out the poor performance of Sindh government departments regarding non-compliance of 884 directives out of 1012 of PACs and asked Sindh chief secretary for comprehensive report of the all departments upon the issue as it could be presented before the upcoming Public Accounts Committee of Sindh Assembly.

In his letter to Sindh chief secretary, Mr Buriro narrated that the recent audit report of Auditor General of Pakistan on account of Sindh government for the audit year of 2016-17 has been laid in the Sindh Assembly and after the perusal of the said report, it unearthed that the 24 Sindh government departments had not complied with the some 88 percent directives of the Public Accounts Committees from 1992 to 2010.

According to the official record, ten Sindh government main departments including Finance, Board of Revenue (BOR), Planning and Development (P&D), Services and General Administration (S&GAD), Excise and Taxation, Information and Archives, Universities and Boards, Labour and Human Resources, Corporation and Sports and Youth Affairs did not comply with any PAC directives.

PAC made 116 directives to Universities and Board Department but no compliance was made, 139 directives made to Sindh Irrigation Department but only 34 were followed, 109 directives issued to Sindh Health Department with compliance of 35, 63 directives issued to Sindh Education Department with only 14 compliance.