LAHORE, March 23: The Punjab accountant general has ordered that all contingency payments, except utility bills, be stopped to the government departments which have not reconciled 100 per cent of their accounts for the first eight months of the current fiscal year.

The AG has also ordered stopping of the salaries of the drawing and disbursing officers whose accounts have yet to be reconciled fully. In his order, announced here on Friday, the AG said only the DDOs who get their accounts completely reconciled with his office would be able to draw their salaries.

The orders have already been conveyed to all government departments and the district accounts offices.

The decision was taken by the AG while presiding over a meeting of a special cell set up for preparing and reconciling the accounts. The meeting was also attended by director general Mumtaz Husain Shah and additional accountant general Hafiz Islam.

It is pertinent to note that the provincial departments, their principal accounting officers (administrative secretaries) and the DDOs concerned have utterly failed to get their accounts reconciled on a monthly basis despite repeated reminders in this regard. Even the exhortations of provincial finance minister Tariq Hamid and chief secretary Imtiaz Masrur have failed to produce the desired result.

The provincial departments are bound, according to the sources in the AG office, to get their accounts/ expenditure reconciled every month. The Chief Executive’s Secretariat has already issued orders to the federal and provincial administrations in this regard.

At a joint meeting with the AG attended by almost all administrative secretaries in January, the finance minister had directed the provincial departments to abide by the rules laid by AG office and get their accounts reconciled the second day of every month. However, the sources said, the secretaries did not attend the meetings held in the subsequent months.

The AG’s Office sources said the departments had got reconciled only 11 per cent of their accounts during January 2002. They said the AG’s Office had paid the provincial departments about Rs17.558 billion during the month while the accounts had been reconciled for only Rs1.923 billion.

Only 64 per cent reconciliation had been achieved for December, 47 per cent for November, 52 per cent for October, 67 per cent for September, 60 per cent for August and 70 per cent for July. The “defaulters” include the chief secretary as well as almost all administrative secretaries, including the Finance Department secretary. The defaulting departments include the Board of Revenue and the Excise and Taxation, Irrigation and Power, Health, Education, Agriculture, Industries, Livestock and Fisheries, Communications and Works, Cooperatives, Forests, Home, and Information Departments.

The sources described the situation as quite dissatisfactory. To enforce financial discipline and prevent misuse of public money, they said, it was the duty of every department and official to account for every paisa spent.