LAHORE, Dec 17: Punjab Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee-II exempted the home secretary from personal appearance before it on Wednesday when the chief minister and the law minister personally requested its chairman to do so.

“Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and Raja Muhammad Basharat phoned me in the morning requesting exemption of Brig Ijaz Shah (Retired) from appearance before the committee for he is busy in a meeting to discuss law and order in the province,” committee chairman Asif Saeed Manais told reporters in his chamber here on Wednesday.

He was not sure whether the request was meant for Thursday’s proceedings too.

However, Tanveer Kaira and Shaikh Amjad Aziz, who were present during the briefing, said that PAC-II members belonging to the opposition parties would walk out of the proceedings if the home secretary did not join them on Thursday.

According to them, the home secretary, like other heads of departments, must represent his department before the committee that is scanning cases of financial irregularities to the tune of Rs540 million.

Alleging that the chief minister was protecting the bureaucracy, they said Thursday’s behaviour of Ijaz Shah would determine if he considered himself above the law.

It may be mentioned that the home secretary never made himself available in the Punjab Assembly when his department would come under discussion. The opposition benches had been taking it as a breach of house’s privilege, taunting the treasury benches that the government had no real powers and that the province was being ruled by some hidden hand.

Earlier, the PAC took up 20 audit paras involving auctions of contracts for canteens in Dera Ghazi Khan, Gujrat, Mandi Bahaudin, Bahawalpur, Attock, Multan, Sahiwal, Lahore, Jhelum and Faisalabad central jails and deposit of the money with a welfare fund instead of the treasury.

The inspector-general for prisons was of the opinion that due to scarcity of funds for provision of food to jail inmates, they had to utilize the canteen auction money for the purpose. Thus the money, amounting to Rs8 million, was deposited with welfare funds of jails instead of the treasury.

He also informed the committee that a summary in this regard had been sent to the chief minister.

The committee observed that if the chief minister did not settle the case within 90 days the money would be deposited with the treasury.

It also formed a committee comprising the finance minister, the IG for prisons, and the director-general of audit to look into shortage of dietary items. The committee would finalize its recommendations within 30 days and the PAC would take a decision on the issue.

The committee also directed the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) vice-chancellor to cancel the contract of a Rawalpindi firm for provision of security guards when the university failed to produce a newspaper advertisement in this regard. The university administration was directed to follow the rules and regulations for re-awarding the contract and hiring the services of a local firm for providing security guards at reduced rates.