ISLAMABAD: The meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on Friday was adjourned in protest over the absence of Interior Secretary Siddiq Akbar in the meeting.

On being questioned, the additional interior secretary informed the committee that the interior secretary was unable to attend the meeting because he, a heart patient, had to rush to the hospital for checkup after he suffered chest pain.

Committee member Hamid Yar Hiraj commented that Akbar had never turned up in the PAC meeting except once and asked how the committee could proceed further in absence of the principal accounting officer.

Committee chairman Nadeem Afzal Gondal sought a report on the machine readable passport facility in foreign missions as there were complaints in this regard.

The committee sought a list of the Blue passports cancelled by the department as the chair said many non-entitled people had been holding the same.

The committee member asked the ministry to apprise about the health of ‘sniffer dogs’ used by the security agencies for VIP security asking whether they even had the capability to detect explosives.