LAHORE, Dec 31: The Accountant General, Punjab has frozen the development budget of all provincial departments that have so far not got accounts of the development funds reconciled for the year 2000-01 or the first quarter of year 2001-02.

Sources in the AG’s Office told Dawn on Monday the decision was taken by the AG, Wazir Ahmad Qureshi, at a meeting on Saturday for failure of several provincial departments to get their accounts reconciled in spite of repeated reminders sent to them by his office. No development funds would be released to a department that does not get the funds released between July 2000 and Sept 2001 reconciled with the office.

The AG has also ordered stopping the payment of salaries to the drawing and disbursing officers of the departments who have not got the accounts of the funds drawn by them reconciled. The decision will be effective from Jan 1, 2002.

According to the sources, the provincial departments have not reconciled accounts in respect of Rs9.3 billion, including Rs6.87 billion development funds, released to them during the last financial year in spite of the directives from the Chief Executive’s Secretariat to the government departments to get their accounts 100 per cent reconciled with the AG’s Office on a monthly basis.

The AG, the sources said, had written time and again to the provincial secretaries to get their accounts of development as well as non-development budgets reconciled with his office. However, most of them did not comply with the reminders and deadlines given to them expired. As a result, the AG’s Office ceased the contingency funds for utility bills and day-to-day expenditure of these departments in early November in order to force them to comply with the instructions. However, the ban was withdrawn when the provincial bureaucracy pressed for it.

Last week, the AG wrote Finance Minister Tariq Hamid and chief secretary Imtiaz Masroor about the situation and apprised them of the disinterest shown by the departments to his repeated directives. As a consequence, it was decided that the AG and the chief secretary would sit together at the committee room of the Finance Department on Wednesday to meet the provincial secretaries. The secretaries have been asked to be present with their relevant staff and documents for an on-the-spot reconciliation of accounts of their respective departments. The AG has also decided to send the names of the “defaulting” officials to the CE’s Secretariat.