ISLAMABAD, June 7: The Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly which met here on Thursday took notice of multiple residential plots being allotted to military generals, judges and top civil bureaucrats without a comprehensive policy and clear rules and guidelines.
The PAC meeting was presided over by its chairman Nadeem Afzal Gondal of PPP.
Speaking on the occasion, the PAC chief said he wanted to know under what policy and rules and guidelines a bureaucrat or a general or judge was given more than one plot and if they were allowed to have more than one residential plot, as to which government had made this irrational policy.
“The PAC is not against facilitating civil and military bureaucrats, but there is no justification behind this entire exercise of getting costly plots at state expenses,” he said.
Mr Gondal said this policy must be brought to an end because it had only created frustration among the public.
He said it was strange that the people sitting at the top in various departments were getting benefits through multiple means, including plots, but the people at the lower rung were only suffering.
“There has to be some even-handed treatment,” he said. He directed his Secretariat to immediately write to all departments concerned and seek their reply about the matter.
The PAC committee, Mr Gondal said, in the past had also sought similar information, but to no avail.
“However, this time I want to ensure that the required information is presented before the committee without delay.”
Speaking on the occasion, Ayaz Sadiq of PML-N said that PAC had decided to take this issue to parliament so that a comprehensive policy was made for distribution of state land for residential purposes. At the moment, he said, it was totally beyond comprehension.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the former chief of PAC, during his stint as head of the PAC, had also taken up the issue of allotment of multiple plots to government employees, but despite his best efforts, the issue remained unattended.
It will be interesting to see whether Mr Gondal, being from treasury benches, could do anything about this policy which he said was highly controversial and needed complete revision.
Earlier, during the meeting, Frontier Works Organisation and National Highway Authority locked their horns over payments which both parties claimed against each other.
According to FWO bosses, the NHA owed the organisation some Rs14 billion against projects which it had carried out for the authority.
Whereas, the NHA high-up said the FWO had to pay the authority Rs5.5 billion. Moreover, the NHA people said that the FWO was managing 54 of its highly profitable toll plazas and not paying even a single penny to the authority.
When the issue started getting complicated during the meeting, the PAC chairman asked both the FWO and NHA chiefs to go outside and decide how they wanted to resolve their differences.
In the end, the committee decided that within a week, both the FWO and the NHA would reconcile their accounts, putting everything in black and white about their liabilities and receivables.