ISLAMABAD, March 12 The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), supposedly the most powerful arm of the parliament, is facing serious secretariat-related issues.

The National Assembly will be completing its second parliamentary year on March 16, but its speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza is yet to appoint a full-time officer to look after the PAC Secretariat.

The National Assembly's director general research and library, Tahir Hanfi, who has been looking after the PAC as an additional charge, on Friday refused to attend its meeting due to his differences with the top bosses of the NA Secretariat.

Sources in the NA told Dawn that Mr Hanfi had informed the NA secretary a month back that he would be unable to carry on with his assignment in the PAC Secretariat until promoted to the next grade.

During one of the PAC meetings held in December, Mr Hanfi, who is the only National Defence Course (NDC) qualified employee of NA, said he was willing to take over the PAC as a fulltime assignment if he was promoted on the basis of his performance and academic credentials.

According to Chairman PAC Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the NA Secretariat is not facilitating the PAC, critically hampering its smooth functioning. About Mr Hanfi's absence from the PAC meeting, he said the official had some issue regarding his promotion with the NA Secretariat; as a result, the PAC was suffering. The PAC has nothing to do with promotions and demotions within the NA Secretariat but has serious concerns over the unavailability of staff for its official business.

A recently-appointed female deputy secretary also did not turn up at the meeting as a protest against the PAC chairman for not allowing her to proceed on a foreign trip. Chaudhry Nisar said the sponsors of the trip wanted only NA officials for the visit. Since she is on deputation in the NA Secretariat, her name was excluded from the training programme, he added.

Though within just one year the PAC came up with three pending annual reports, the speaker NA didn't take them up for discussion. Presenting the report before the house, the chairman PAC impatiently requested the speaker to spare a few days exclusively for the reports which he claimed carried some mind-boggling incidents of corruption committed in various public sector organisations.

On Friday, Chaudhry Nisar again complained against the NA Secretariat for its step-motherly treatment towards PAC, saying “If the PAC does not has its own house in order how it can meet the challenging task of conducting financial scrutiny of federal public sector organisations”.

Auditor General Tanvir Ali Agha said the PAC would be heading towards more grilling sessions in the coming days for which it needed fully committed staff. Therefore, he requested for an in-house meeting to chart out a strategy for PAC's sustainable working.

Some in the NA Secretariat believed that Chaudhry Nisar's poor liaison with his staff due to his preoccupation as the opposition leader in NA was causing problem within the PAC Secretariat. Since taking over the PAC, Chaudhry Nisar has never held a meeting with his staff to improve its working, they said.