LAHORE, July 3: The Adhoc Public Accounts Committee stressed on Wednesday the need to review the perks and privileges of provincial assembly members and bureaucrats.
Discussing the PA appropriation accounts and audit paras relating to years 1998-99 and 1999-2000, APAC chairman Riaz Husain Bokhari observed that the bureaucrats emulated the private sector business executives in matters relating to perks and privileges without any justification.
He said the executives acquired costly limousines, numerous telephones and maintained a lavish lifestyle for the advancement of their business but in imitating them the bureaucrats only squandered public funds. He said Finance Minister Tariq Hamid should take notice of this waste of public funds.
He also objected to the terminology used for various kinds of expenditure incurred on the Punjab Assembly members. He said the members were described as officers in the budgetary statements whereas they were not public servants.
He said the travelling allowance and daily allowance paid to the PA members could not be described as a subsidy as had been done in the statement of accounts submitted by the PA secretary. He said the word had a specific significance. Using it for a transfer payment was also wrong. He said the nomenclature should reflect the nature of expenditure. Finance Department representative pointed out that classification was the privilege of the accountant general.
The PA secretary informed the committee that MPAs enjoyed several privileges under a law enacted in 1974. Every member received Rs450 daily in the form of a subsidy. Previously, an accommodation was provided and house rent was paid only to the members who could not find a suitable accommodation. Later, the house granted it to all members.
He said every MPA was paid Rs1,000 daily for accommodation which was inadequate. The members were also paid a salary of Rs4,500 per month and an equal amount for the maintenance of office. They was permitted to make 3,000 telephone calls in a month. The facilities, he said, were inadequate for a PA member. The medical allowance of Rs6 million worked out to between Rs1,500 and Rs1,600 per member when divided over a house of 246.
He said that the government spent an average of Rs16,000 to Rs17,000 per month on a PA member. A member attending any committee meeting was entitled to a daily allowance for one day before the meeting and one day afterwards. The members attending the PA sessions were entitled to daily allowance two days prior to the date of the commencement of the session and two days after the conclusion date.
He said the discretionary use of cars by the PA speaker was a grey area. A speaker used 12 to 13 cars and kept another six or seven in his pool. One of the speakers, he said, had never used a single car himself. A car was, however, used by his staff.
He said only the word ‘car’ was used for the transport facilities to be provided to the speaker in 1972-73. In 1985, the assembly changed it to ‘cars.’ It was again changed to ‘car’ during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure.
He said that the speaker, deputy speaker and leader of opposition were entitled to four telephone connections each with the privilege to make unlimited calls. Each of them was entitled to two telephone connections at his office and another two at his residence.
Responding to a question, he said that the chief secretary, the secretaries for Finance and Home Departments the and inspector general of police were among the bureaucrats enjoying the privilege of unlimited calls from their residential telephones. All the secretaries and senior bureaucrats could make unlimited calls from their office phones. There was no restriction even on the number of international calls.
Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam said a reasonable limit should be prescribed for the office and residential telephones to check waste. Even the bureaucrats exceeding the prescribed limit should be required to maintain record of the calls made in excess of the prescribed limit.
Answering a question, the PA secretary said assembly members in India enjoyed much better privileges than their counterparts in Pakistan. Privileges of the Sri Lankan assembly members were less than Pakistan.
He said that the speaker approved the scheme for gifts for foreign delegations. Such gifts were not very costly. The speaker and PA members were allowed to retain the gifts presented to them by the visiting foreign delegations in case these were of moderate value.
He said the assembly was the law making body and determined the privileges of its members on its own. The decisions taken by the assembly were to be implemented and could not be scrutinized. The PAC chairman said the proposals given by him were aimed at making the PA expenditure transparent.
PSIC: The Punjab Small Industries Corporation managing director informed the committee that an assistant director had been deputed to hold an inquiry into overpayment made to assistant directors in Rajgarh, Multan. He said no senior officer was posted there. The PAC chairman directed him to send a senior officer from Lahore to look into the matter.
The PAC members took a serious view of issuing salary cheques to two dismissed and one retired officer of the Shahdara Weaving Institute six months after they were out of service. The manager of the institute said he had continued sending ‘changes’ to the Accountant General’s Office and returning the cheques regularly for several months till the ‘changes’ were fed into the computer.
The PAC chairman said the system of computerized cheques required review. He said no new salary cheques should have been issued once a cheque was returned with the ‘change’ saying that the concerned official was no more in service.
TEVTA: Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority secretary Iqbal Nasir pointed out that the AG’s Office took 8 months in feeding his deputation allowance change in computer. He continued submitting hand written bills during the period.
The committee took a serious view of the failure of the government departments to surrender surplus budget in March and showing it as savings at the end of the year. The departments also drew the salary for the vacant posts and refunded it at the end of the year.
The Finance Department representative clarified that a circular had been issued to all the departments that no post would be retrenched for surrendering its salary budget. He said the department collected only the details of the budget and did not take any unilateral decisions in respect of retrenchment of a post.
Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam said the policies of the Finance and Services and General Administration Departments were contradictory. The S&GAD, he said, had ruled that the post remaining under additional charge for six months would automatically stand abolished.
The PSIC MD said closure of the Government Printing Press and entrusting of printing to the private sector was being considered seriously. The government was also considering import of paper to get rid of blackmail by two private mills which dictated their rates and invariably delayed supplies. The governor would be briefed on the subject shortly.
The PAC will now meet on Monday, July 8.