ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday directed the Federal Investigation Agency to stop harassing individuals in a case involving former employees of the Pakistan International Airlines.

“Services of these 800 or so individuals have been terminated. They have suffered enough,” said Chairman Public Accounts Committee (PAC) MNA Noor Alam Khan after requesting members to revisit some of the audit paragraphs.

The apex parliamentary body discussed the matter while taking up audit paras of the Finance Division for year 2021-22.

Revisiting the paras, some members were of the view that recoveries should be made from the former PIA employees who had submitted fake degrees at the time of induction.

PAC seeks audit of all institutions, directs FIA to recover Rs44bn from Byco

The PAC members also called for action against PIA staff that recruited these pilots without ascertaining the documentation first.

However, MNA Noor Alam Khan informed the committee that there were no dues pending against the individuals in question.

The member responded that a precedent should not be set as this would be a sole case where former PIA employees had been given relief on compassionate grounds.

The committee handed over the recovery audit objections related to a petroleum company headquartered in Karachi, Byco, to the FIA.

“You have to recover Rs44 billion from Byco Company,” the chairman directed the FIA officials. MNA Noor Alam Khan also directed the agency to investigate how did the company manage to change its name and seemed to be back in business.

“These recoveries have to be made, especially when the government is heavily in debt,” MNA Khan said.

The committee also withdrew instructions given earlier to place officials of a private company on the Exit Control List (ECL) and to unblock their identification.

MNA Khan also informed the committee he wrote to the prime minister regarding the institutions that have not been audited. “All institutions that have not held departmental accounts committees (DACs) have been asked to conduct audits. This message is for all departments and divisions,” said Noor Alam Khan.

Before reviewing the audit objections for the year 2021-22 related to Finance Division in the meeting, the Ministry of Finance had requested an in-camera meeting, and Noor Alam Khan obliged.

Nonetheless, some of the audit objections included the issuance of supplementary grants without the approval of the National Assembly amounting to a little over Rs440 billion.

Further objections included lapses due to the non-surrendering of the final budget of 28 grants to the tune of Rs32.343 billion, which, the audit department believed, indicated that there were no internal controls to watch the flow of expenditure in the ministries/divisions.

Similarly, objections were also raised on unjustified demand for supplementary grants creating undue pressure of Rs863 billion on the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2023