LAHORE, Nov 16: Audit of union council accounts in the Punjab is expected to begin next month, more than two years and four months after their coming into existence on Aug 14, 2001.

Nothing is known about the utilization of funds by 3,453 union councils in the Punjab and thousands of more in other provinces.

The Local Fund Audit Department has not been able to start the audit of the UCs because of acute shortage of staff. A large number of posts are vacant and 70 per cent of the existing staff is engaged in pre-audit in towns and districts.

The department is, however, making preparations for starting the audit of UCs from next month.

It will check the UCs accounts of only two months in every year in accordance with the rules. An official of the department said that the UCs audit would be interesting as many had no record of expenditure.

Each union council received Rs4 million on the average in the form of government grants during the past two years and four months.

The UCs have been utilizing not only the government grants but their directly generated revenue without submitting details of utilization of funds because of absence of any hierarchical linkage between the UCs, towns and district governments.

The union councils have no system for preparation of estimates of development projects but can award contracts for works costing up to a maximum of Rs100,000. The limit is being raised to Rs300,000. The UCs cannot prepare project cost estimates because their staff comprises three secretaries and one or two naib qasids.

The Town and District Nazims often offer assistance to UCs for preparation of cost estimates of projects but town and district government engineers are not obliged to prepare project estimates for the UCs because of lack of any linkage with them.

Many UC Nazims complain that town and district engineering staff demanded compensation for their services in respect of preparation of development projects cost estimates and supervision.