ISLAMABAD July 5: The ad-hoc Public Accounts Committee on Friday expressed its satisfaction on the performance of the National Logistic Cell (NLC) but asked it to keep its activities within the mandate.

Chaired by Mr H U Baig, the committee, on the last day of its proceedings, was given an indepth briefing by the Principal Accounting Officer (PAO) and director-general of NLC on the performance and financial viability of the Cell.

The NLC officials claimed that it was an attached department of planning ministry and had grown in all its segmental operations. It had achieved its net worth of Rs4,208 million in 2002 from Rs647.012 million in year 1980.

They said it had performed according to international levels of financial discipline and had achieved liquidity of Rs1,206 million.

The organization repaid loans worth Rs1,082 million from its own resources and achieved over 95 per cent budgeted target amounting to Rs2,247 million in the year 2002-2001, despite an increase of 42 per cent from the last year’s revenue target.

The NLC did a good job as NHA’s tolling agency and collected over Rs1,000 million yearly on M-5 Islamabad-Lahore motorway of which, only five per cent was charged by the organization and the rest 13 per cent was spent on the system’s management.

The PAC was informed that the NLC had undertaken the job of repairing some of the major roads in the country such as Jail Road in Lahore, Murree-Rawalpindi Road, Kharian-Rawalpindi additional carriage-way and Rawal Road in Rawalpindi.

The PAO was advised by the committee to shed the attached department status of the NLC and give it an autonomous status with its own charter. The NLC was also directed to negotiate with the government on terms of sharing its profits.

The NLC employed a total number of 7,112 personnel, including 2,665 serving army personnel and 4,447 civilians whose salaries and allowances accounted for Rs296 million per annum.

The PAC was told that the NLC had become a logistic organization of international repute and a number of foreign countries including the US had sought to share its successful set up.

The senior deputy attorney general, speaking on the occasion, said the NLC had not responded on time to the audit objection of spending Rs413 million on hiring private sector transport, giving a wrong impression of the organization.

He mentioned a few other sore points while dealing with the audit of the NLC and asked for cooperation in preparation of audit performance report.

He said the audit objections related to the disposal of retired debts, receivables, advances and physical verifications, which had been taken care off by the organization.

Earlier, appropriation accounts of senate secretariat for the year 1999-2000 and the savings thereof amounting to Rs38.857 million and Rs47.516 million in the charged and other than charged section respectively, were settled by the PAC.

The DG Audit informed the committee about the non-recovery of annual renewal fee and royalty of the wireless licenses amounting to Rs88.998 million by the PTA, which was to be recovered from 43 licence holders and were outstanding since 1977-1998.

The chairman PTA, while explaining the current position said after correcting the calculations, the dues to be recovered now comes to only Rs35 million because Rs10 million have been recovered from the defaulters.

The committee took notice of the alarming position of recoveries of private telephone dues, which stood at Rs665.675 million in June 2001 as reported by the external auditors.

The meeting was also attended by S M Zafarullah, Ahadullah Akmal, Muzaffar Ahmad, Lt-Gen Talat Masood (retired), M Hasan Bhutto, S Shaukat Kazmi, Irtiza Hussain, senior DAGP Chaudry Mohammad Ilyas and other high officials of the senate secretariat and population welfare.