KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday refused to settle two draft paras of Rs134.322 million from the audit reports for 2009-10 of the home department’s prisons section and referred them to the PAC subcommittee for re-verification of the documents produced by the section in support of the expenditures incurred on the purchase of uniforms and dietary items for the prisoners during the year.

The second meeting, which was scheduled for 3pm, was adjourned by the PAC chief to next month without consideration to the replies of draft paras based on the audit report of accounts of District Government Shaheed Benazirabad for 2010-2011 as the working papers were not in order. Besides, Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Nawaz Soho had informed the PAC that he had taken the charge only on Aug 21, followed by two days weekend holidays.

The PAC met with its chairman Saleem Abbas Jalbani, Khairunisa Mughal, Nand Kumar and Sorath Thebo in the main Assembly Building on Wednesday. While considering the audit reports of 2009-10 of the prisons section of the home department took exception to the failure of the relevant officials to produce record at the time of audit and make it available after a couple of years for verification to the auditors when the department was served with a notice of the PAC meeting schedule.

The meeting, however, settled its remaining four paras involving a total amount of Rs5.542 million which was verified by the auditors as the department had produced the record relating to other formalities.

Referring the two paras for consideration to the subcommittee when the PAC chief asked about the reasons for the inordinate delay in submitting the record for verification, Prisons IG Nusrat Hussain Mangan conceded his department’s mistake which despite having the record did not produce it at the time of audit. “We will ensure that such lapses on our part should not be repeated,” he told the PAC.

Nand Kumar observed that the way the audit officials had verified the paras without questioning the long delay in producing the documents, it appeared that the department and auditors had struck some sort of alliance that was why the draft paras were verified despite the long gap. He also said that although millions of rupees were being allocated in the budget every year for the prison kitchen, there had been persistent reports in the press of extremely low quality food being served to the prisoners as if the entire budget was being embezzled.

Sorath Thebo was critical of the way the documents were accepted for verification, saying that why it was not made part of the report that the officials who failed to produce the record at the time of audit, after a lapse of so many years, how they produced it in January 2015.

Ms Mughal said that in the given situation it was not difficult to maintain a proper record of documents to produce it to the auditors on time to avoid the draft paras in the audit reports.

Responding to the PAC criticism about verification of the record, Deputy Auditor General Rubina Safeer said there was a general trend and fashion of not giving importance to the auditors.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2015

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