LAHORE, Nov 17: The Public Accounts Committee of the Punjab Assembly on Monday directed the attachment of property of a sub-treasurer in the Attock district revenue office to recover embezzled amount from him.

Khizar Hayat had embezzled more than Rs17.6 million from salaries and pension funds of government employees by tempering with stamp papers.

The committee, which met here with Asif Saeed Manais in the chair, directed the department concerned that the official should be sacked from service besides registering a case against him.

It also sought confiscation of his property —- a two-kanal house, a service station, a 14-marla house, and around 22-kanal farm land in and around Fateh Jang —- and recovery of the pillaged amount by auctioning these assets as arrears of land revenue.

The committee also summoned the Attock district revenue officer in its next meeting besides referring the case to the NAB for further action.

It expressed concern over writing off a Suzuki car of the S&GAD by the finance department which had been stolen some time ago. However, the committee admitted that the department had taken the step through a competent authority.

The body was satisfied over the pace of recovery of over payments in salaries and pensions in various districts.

According to Mr Manais, the recovery progress was over 50 per cent in Attock, Multan, Gujranwala, Narowal and Mianwali.

He said the district accounts officers had been directed to complete the process as earlier as possible and get the accounts verified in a thorough audit.

Talking to newsmen, he said lack of accountability in provincial departments had caused a loss of billions of rupees to the public exchequer.

The amount, he said, was lost on account of financial irregularities, negligence, embezzlements, misappropriations, over payments, violations of rules and regulations and outstanding recoveries.

The pilferage of millions of rupees was found during sample audit in 1999-2000. It was believed that the actual amount of loss was much higher than indicated in the sample audit, he said.

Around 20 per cent audit observations related to misappropriations and embezzlement cases, he said.

Mr Khan said the audit report looked only at books and could not make out if any loss was caused to the public exchequer on account of connivance of engineers of a project with contractors.

Even in a seemingly genuine open tendering the government could lose millions because of rampant commission system and thus quoting of highly inflated rates in bidding, he regretted.