Almost every time the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly meets it produces a shocker, in fact a series of shockers, reflecting the vast misuse or waste of public funds by official functionaries at all levels.

It is not often that the PAC meets as we do not have a Parliament much of the time. The country has been under military rule during more than half of its chequered history.

Even after the general elections following prolonged intervals and the meeting of the Parliament, which, too, can be delayed, it takes a long time for the PAC to be set up and for it to meet to grapple with the financial and administrative misdeeds of the past including vast embezzlements and waste of public funds.

Even a cautious former secretary general of finance like H.U. Beg, who became chairman of the Ad Hoc PAC was so struck by the big waste and embezzlement of public funds at the federal level that he wanted much of the deadwood to be brought before the public in proper detail.

He advocated open meetings of the PAC and made his own hearings of the PAC open to the Press. The public then got to know how rotten are vast parts of the financial administration of the state and how resistant to correction or effective remedies.

And when Mohammad Khan Junejo as prime minister in the 1980s was given a delayed report of the public accounts committee he asked what was the use of producing a report long after most of the guilty officials listed thereon had either left office or the country or had died?. He did not say that some of the impugned were back in office in powerful offices blocking effective action against them.

And yet when a PAC is set up after long delayed elections and it swings into action digging the deadwood and delinquencies of the past, it comes out with a ghastly picture of previous financial misdeeds, embezzlements and big waste of public funds.

The new PAC as it met under chairman Malik Allah Yar Khan had stories of official misdeeds or wilful lapses as old as three years right from the days Pakistan came into being which remain uncorrected or unrectified. And they relate to the most unexpected division, the division of the ministry of minority affairs, which is hardly ever in the limelight.

The division has failed to deposit evacuee jewellry - gold weighing 7 mounds. one seer and 40 tolas and silver weighing 42 mounds, 30 seers, and 63 tolas and cash amounting to Rs. 370 million into the federal treasury. The total value of the jewellry not deposited with the treasury should be very large, apart from the cash but that has not been given.

The PAC has shown its displeasure with the Punjab and Baluchistan governments for not depositing their part of the jewellry since 1947 or the money and directed that should be done now and reported.

The PAC was discussing the accounts of the minorities division for the year 2000-2001, and was instead confronted with by too many 57-year old skeletons which might have enriched too many officials in the distant past or over the years.

The federal cabinet had earlier asked the minorities division to deposit the valuables in the treasury at Islamabad and report to the PAC, but without any effect. The big question hanging over the PAC room was whether the gold and silver and the money, Rs 370 million, was there some where in the official boxes and had been spirited away and some fake items, if any, left in their place?

For the final answer the PAC has to pursue the case relentlessly, uncover full details of the case and come to its final conclusion. If Sindh and the Frontier had deposited the evacuee gold silver and cash what was their value? The volume of jewellry from Sindh should have been very large.

The question is if the PAC did not receive positive response from the minorities division why did it not pursue the case relentlessly and produce positive results or expose the officials guilty of mishandling the jewellry or misappropriating that all.

The PAC lamented the role of the officials responsible for the delay in depositing the jewellry in the treasury during all these 57 years and directed the Audit Department to verify the gold and silver ornaments.

The PAC also voiced the fear that after 57 years the ornaments might have been misappropriated. Hence the non-surrender of the jewellry over the years to the federal treasury.

The PAC also asked the minorities division to strengthen financial controls within its structure and strictly monitor utilization of the funds. The PAC deplored the feeble performance of the financial advisers in each ministry and their failure to be effective.

It wanted proper financial advisers to be appointed in each ministry and they should be competent person familiar with audit and account. Ceremonial postings and casual auditing will not do. And they must follow the Secretariat Instructions of the Government of Pakistan.

In fact, it may be far better to appoint such advisers with the approval of the Auditor General of Pakistan so that the deadwood may not be palmed off to the ministries as financial advisers to do just about nothing to check the rot in the ministries and introduce proper accounting and auditing.

When it is so hard to collect larger taxes and there is a clamour for tax relief to accelerate economic growth it is imperative to ensure that all the money collected as tax or borrowed externally or domestically is well spent.

And that is all the more imperative in respect of the record official development expenditure of Rs. 202 billion so that the country can truly benefit by that and poverty can be reduced and employment increased.

The World Bank and other donors agree there is vast waste in public spending and the return on investment in the public sector is small. And that can be improved by the financial advisors at all levels in all ministries and by a vigilantes public accounts committee overseeing the operations of the financial advisors as a whole.

There were reports in the earlier years of Pakistan that a number of well-to-do Indian Muslims came here with large funds and deposited that in the Habib Bank without telling their relations.

Later they died and the relative who did not know of such deposits earlier, could not claim the money. The Habib Bank which was the only prominent Muslim bank then gained by that. How far were such reports true? Could the Pakistan government lay a claim to those funds?