LAHORE, Aug 25: The Senate Standing Committee on Sports has once again instructed the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to provide a break-up of its staff’s salary packages instead of just informing of their basic emoluments.

The instructions were issued to the PCB officials’ Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Hasan Ahmed and Director Human Resources Nadeem Akram who appeared before the Committee in Islamabad on Saturday on behalf of their chairman Dr Nasim Ashraf.

The Senate Committee has been demanding details of PCB’s salary packages and staff strength since May 2007, after some critics showed concern over too many unnecessary appointments by the PCB chairman. The issue was raised in April 2007, after Pakistan’s poor show in the World Cup.

In its last meeting, held in June, the PCB could only come up with employee names after which it was instructed to also provide details of their salaries.

But on Saturday, other than providing the details of its Chief Operating Officer (COO) Shafqat Naghmi’s salary package, the PCB was unable to fulfil the Committee’s demands.

According to reliable sources, various members of the Senate Committee were quite unhappy over the board’s delaying tactics.

Up until May 30, 2007, the PCB has employed some 352 people out of which some 55 appointments were made between Feb and May 2007. In all, there were 61 appointments made till the end of May by the PCB chairman after his assuming of charge on Oct 6, 2006. And this was done despite the board being overstaffed already.

There are further reports that more appointments are still to be made to provide regional associations with all kinds of staff.

While the COO is drawing a gross salary of Rs450,000 (basic pay Rs38,000, senior position allowance: Rs240,000, disturbance allowance Rs100,000, special additional allowance Rs72,000, the others are entitled to get 60 per cent of their basic salary as MTS, 30 per cent as house rent and 36.67 per cent as special allowances.

The basic salaries of the directors are as follows:

Mudassar Nazar (Director National Cricket Academy) Rs180,000, Zakir Khan (Director Cricket Operations) Rs180,000, Saleem Altaf (Director Special Projects) Rs151,000, Ahsan Hameed Malik (Director Media, Marketing) Rs150,000 and Hasan Ahmed (CFO) Rs165,000.

For the next committee meeting, likely to be held on Sept 17, it has been reported that the PCB officials have been instructed to send the PCB chairman himself with the complete details of his salary package. Sources further disclosed that CFO Hasan Ahmed was questioned for giving a wrong statement before the committee in the absence of the PCB chairman. Hasan informed the members that the PCB chairman was in New York since Aug 6 but he contradicted by Enver Baig, one of the members on the Committee, that the chairman only went to the US on Aug 15 while the Senate Committee had made the requisition for this meeting on Aug 4.

Meanwhile, the names of Jehanzeb Afzal — who has been given a letter of appointment as business development manager — and Aamir Bilal who is a consultant were not included in the list of PCB staff members presented to the Senate Committee.

When contacted, the PCB Media Director Ahsan Hameed Malik clarified that despite receiving an appointment letter, Jehanzeb has not accepted the offer, and since Aamir Bilal was a consultant his name is not on the pay roll.