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Bureaucracy responsible for power outages: PAC
ISLAMABAD: Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the parliament has held government officials responsible of loadhsedding, Geo News reported on Friday.The meeting of the PAC held here under the chair of Nadeem Afzal. It deliberated on the reservations on the audit of Water and Power Ministry. The committee showed strong resentment on the issue of power outages.
Chairman of the committee asserted that attention of the masses should be diverted to government officials instead of politicians, adding bureaucracy is responsible of loadshedding.
He said people should be provided pictures of the officials of the departments concerned so that they could burn their effigies instead of the politicians.
The chairman said they could not tolerate mismanagement in power supply.
APP adds:The financial irregularities worth Rs 26.796 billion have been found in the financial accounts of Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) during last six years, according to the audit report tabled before the Public Accounts Committee.
The Committee directed the management of WAPDA to expedite the reconciliation of amounts recovered through confiscation of performance guarantees of all the purchase orders and also ordered to fix responsibility against the persons held responsible.
Discussing the audit para regarding the loss of Rs 510.795 million due to non-replacement of sub-standard and rejected foreign material, the committee directed the management to explain the latest status of the replacement of rejected material/recovery of the cost paid and asked why the payment was released without proper inspection of the material supplied.
The committee also directed the management to explain the reasons that why payment were made without properly inspecting the material and fix the responsibility within one month.
The WAPDA official told the committee that M/s Siemens Pakistan Engineering Company was asked to furnish warranty of material and arrange pre-installation of inspection of all blades on their own expenses.
He said that a meeting has been held with Siemens representatives, final response is awaited and will be intimated to the committee.
To another para regarding loss of revenue of Rs 1,987.356 million due to non-recovery of fines, the PAC directed the management to expedite the recovery of amount debited and also intimate the outcome of realization of amount debited after reverification of audit notes.
The WAPDA official said that all the pointed out amount has been debited to the consumers and the recovery amounting to Rs 5.641million is under process and the issue of non debiting of audit notes was discussed in the meeting of CEO HESCO, wherein it was brought to light that certain audit notes not based on justified grounds, which were primarily not checked by the officers concerned and agreed due to rush of work, which requires re-verification jointly by the officers concerned and audit.
He said that after such verification, the amount of justified audit notes shall be debited immediately.
Courtesy www.geo.tv