March 20, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 30, 1428

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LAHORE, March 19: The National Assembly Committee on Railways has taken a strong exception to the fact that the dossier containing original documents regarding the Railways Golf Club deal have been missing from the record.

Presided over by Sardar Tufail Ahmad, an NA body meeting at the PR headquarters here on Monday constituted a four-member committee of senior officers to hold a thorough probe, fix responsibility and get a case registered against the people found involved in the matter after recovery of the missing dossier.

Headed by Railways Inspector-General of Police Maj Zaheer Ahmad (retired) and comprising PR Vigilance Wing director Brig Syed Waqar Bokhari, Legal Affairs director Irfan Masood Sheikh and Peshawar Divisional Superintendent Shafiullah Khan, the committee has been directed to submit a detailed report to the body by April 20.

The NA body had already reached consensus, at a meeting at the Railway Golf Club last year, that the deal was by no means a transparent transaction and it benefited the lessee instead of the organisation, two participants of the Monday meeting told this reporter.

“We were and we are of the view that the financial implications of the deal were not worked out before awarding the contract to a consortium and the Financial Adviser and Chief Accounts Officer (FA&CAO) seconded this assertion of the then minister of state Ishaq Khan Khakwani during the May 18 meeting,” they said.

Another member of the committee, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, said the railways legal affairs director and the financial adviser and chief accounts officer had told the meeting that the lessee was neither fulfilling the financial nor contractual obligations of the deal and still owed the PR over Rs12 million.

The company was also to construct a five-star hotel at the Golf Club within a year of the takeover and pay a penalty of $1 million in case of failure to do so. But even the foundation stone of the facility has not been laid and the company has paid no penalty.

Mr Shafiullah was the then marketing director of the railways and had handed over the control of the golf club to the lessee. “Mr Khan informed the meeting the missing file had all the offers received for the golf club. Many companies had better offers but the contract was awarded to the present lessee,” Mr Sadiq quoted Mr Khan as having informed the meeting.

The committee and the railway administration agreed to stop deduction of house repair allowance from the BS-1 to BS-6 employees salaries whose basic pay was more than Rs3,000. Instead, deduction would now be made from the salaries of the employees whose basic pay is more than Rs7,040. It was decided that the executive committee of the railway board would resolve the matter after getting approval from the finance ministry in this regard within a month or so.

“The decision, if implemented, will benefit around 80,000 employees of the railways who are in BS-1 to BS-6,” said Sardar Ayaz who had been raising the issue for the last two years.

He said the ceiling for deduction of house repair allowance was not revised after 1993 and the decision would cost merely Rs500,000 a month to the railways.

The meeting was told that though the Pakistan Railways was not responsible for the death of six children, who were hit while playing on the track by Karachi Express near Bahawalpur, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad had informally approached the Punjab chief minister for the payment of Rs100,000 compensation to the heirs of each child.

A misunderstanding between NA body chairman Sardar Tufail Ahmad and Railways member (finance) Shabbir Ahmad Dahar resulted in abrupt conclusion of the meeting.

Mr Ahmad had asked Mr Dahar to present railways budget proposals for the 2007-08 fiscal so that the NA body could review and incorporate the suggestions of its members in it. Mr Dahar said the suggestions of the NA body could not be incorporated in the budget proposals as they had been forwarded to the finance ministry. Mr Ahmad took it as refusal on the part of Mr Dahar and came out of the meeting while asking railways high-ups to issue the member finance a show cause notice for disobeying the directions of the NA body.

The misunderstanding was fixed by Sardar Ayaz and other members of the NA body besides Railways Board Chairman Ijaz Qureshi and officers.

Other members of committee who attended the meeting were Saeed Virk, Mrs Naseem Akhtar Chaudhry, Anwar Bhutto, Tasneem Qureshi, Dr Nisar Ahmad, Farooq-i-Azam Malik, Qazi Hameedullah Khan, Pir Muhammad Shah Khagga and Sahibzada Mahboob Sultan.

General manager (operations) Asad Saeed, general manager (development and services) Mushtaq Khan Jadoon, and other senior officers also attended the meeting.