RAWALPINDI, Oct 20: Auditing and accounting system of local governments has not been functioning properly since its introduction under Local Government Ordinance (LGO) 2001.

According to a document obtained by Dawn, in many districts no accounts committee has been formed and in many others the district council could not discuss the audit reports as the auditor general of Pakistan did not send the reports to Zila Nazims.

The Local Government Ordinance 2001 had made it obligatory that all district governments would have Zila Accounts Committees (ZACs).

In many districts these committees have not been formed and even if they have been formed they are not functioning properly.

In Balochistan, no ZAC exists in all the 13 districts.

In Sindh out of total 23 districts the data of the six committees is not available and 15 committees have never sent any report about their work to the district councils whereas no ZAC was formed in two districts. District councils had taken no action against the non-functional committees.

In 24 districts of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), there have been two non-functional ZACs and in two districts no committee has been formed.

Only five committees have met once in four-year term while 15 committees in the province have shown no progress.

The performance of ZACs has been somewhat better in the province of Punjab where out of total 35 districts only six have no accounts committees.

The data of four ZACs was not available and 19 committees had submitted no report to the respective district councils and no action was taken by any district government. Only six accounts committees have been functioning in accordance with rules and regulations.

The document said the new local governments in 2005 too could not make any difference with regard to performance of ZACs as overwhelming numbers of LGs do not have the ZACs.

According to the LGO 2001 and under the constitution of Pakistan, AGP is responsible for conducting the audits of the accounts of all local governments and send the audit reports back to the Governor of the province.

The Governor sends the reports to the respective District Nazims who table them before the district council for the discussions.

As per the available documents the local government commissions of all provinces had written to the AGP that many district nazims had not received annual audit reports of the last financial year. Therefore there respective councils could not discuss the reports to the satisfaction of public representatives.