April 23, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1429

LAHORE, April 22: While the National Assembly’s floor was sounded last week over the issue of wrong information conveyed to it by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) regarding the salary of one of its key officials, further investigations into the matter reveal that no salary record is available on four senior cricket board officials.

A confidential letter written by the PCB’s internal auditor department to senior general manager finance on Feb 11, 2008 has sought clarification on the account from which the salaries of the four officials including Chief Operating Officer Shafqat Naghmi, Director Human Resources and Admin, Director Marketing Dr Ahsan Hameed Malik and ex-Chief Financial Officer Hasan Ahmad who recently resigned, are being paid.

“During the course of our comprehensive audit of the December 2007 payroll, it was observed that the names of the following senior employees were conspicuous by their absence therein and which appears to suggest that a supplementary payroll is prepared monthly, perhaps manually, in respect of their pay, allowances and bonuses - a) Chief Operating Officer, b) Director HR and Admin, c) Director Marketing and d) Chief Financial Officer.

“Kindly clarify, thus enabling us to complete the payroll audit at the earliest and thus proceeding to the next stage of our routine audit,” the letter adds.

Last week, the PCB officials informed the National Assembly that Shafqat Naghami was drawing a salary of Rs 38,000 but in fact, the amount was later substantiated to be Rs 700,000 with Rs 38,000 as the basic salary. Federal Sports Minister Khawaja Asif condemned the act of giving wrong information and the matter had been referred to the privilege committee.