ISLAMABAD: The subcommittee of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday directed the interior ministry to recover the amount form National Testing Service (NTS) it had collected as fee for the recruitment of police personnel in the federal capital.

Reviewing the paras of the audit report 2016-17, the subcommittee headed by MNA Naveed Qamar was informed by the audit officials that Islamabad police had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NTS for conducting physical and written test for the recruitment of police personnel.

In that regard, the testing service received Rs650 per applicant. A total of 45,939 applicants appeared in the physical test out of which 15,279 were allowed to appear in the written test.

As many as 30,660 applicants could not pass the physical test, hence they were not allowed to sit written test but Rs19.929 million were collected from them as fee. The audit officials said the involvement of a private entity in the government structure was a violation of Civil Servants Act 1973.

The committee said the money collected from the applicants who could not be entertained for the written should be reverted the fee.

Replying to a question, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operations) said the fee was collected by the NTS and it was still with them.

Syed Naveed Qamar directed interior secretary Naseem Khokhar to recover the money from the NTS within a month and submit a compliance report to the committee.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2020