LAHORE, July 25: Punjab Public Accounts Committee Chairman Muhammad Azeem Noori Ghumman and Accountant-General Wazir Ahmed Qureshi will hold joint open courts in all the districts of the province from next month for clearing the pending pension cases.
The first court will be held at Sialkot on August 5. A decision to this effect was taken during a visit of the PAC chairman to the AG office here recently. It was also decided that the accountant-general would submit a detailed report about the pension cases to the PAC chairman who would fix responsibility for delay and determine the monetary losses suffered by the pensioners on account of it.
The AG informed the PAC chief that the officials empowered to sanction pension cases in different government departments were not taking interest in their work despite provision of lists of the employees scheduled to retire within a year and six months by his office.
He said even the pension disposal cases committee constituted by the Punjab government had lost its utility because its chairman had not bothered to attend even a single meeting since its formation.
He said he had all the meetings of the committee held in different districts till date, but the chairman had not bothered to preside over a single meeting despite repeated requests.
Mr Qureshi said the government should consider constitution of a pension committee headed by the PAC chief which should be authorized to sanction pension cases in the event of delay and proceed against the authorities concerned besides compensating the pensioners for the losses suffered by them.
