News
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Govt creating hurdles in working of PAC: Nisar
* Opposition leader in NA says government will not be allowed to treat PAC as it has the Supreme Court
By Tanveer Ahmed
ISLAMABAD: Opposition leader in National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, on Saturday, accused the present government of creating impediments in the working of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), as it was about to carry out audit of its first year in office.
Speaking at a seminar organised by Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) to honour the members of PAC for their achievements in recovering the public money, Nisar, though commended the government for extending support to PAC, however, in the same breath, blamed it for now creating bottlenecks when the highest parliamentary watchdog was going to take up audit of the sitting government.
The opposition leader made it clear that the government would not be allowed to treat PAC the way it treated verdicts of the Supreme Court (SC) and ombudsman, and asked the government to implement 23,000 audit paras to prove its sincerity to PAC.
Nisar also declared that no one was above law and would have to be made accountable as far as utilisation of public funds was concerned. “We dealt with military in the case of public funds because we believe it is not state within a state but a department of the government,” he clarified.
He said that being PAC chairman, he never politicized the body or scandalized any issue that could have embarrassed the government.
“The president and prime minister are also aware of the fact that I went out of way to defuse the situation in certain cases,” Nisar claimed.
He categorically stated that he had no intention to turn PAC into a battleground but would at the same time wanted to press the government to implement 23,000 audit paras awaiting government’s action.
Nisar also called for institutionalizing the role of TIP to supplement the working of PAC and commended it for extending massive cooperation in its working.
The opposition leader said he believed that survival of the country lay in rule of law, democracy and transparency, and added that working of public representatives in PAC was reflective of the fact that they had an urge for transparency contrary to the public image. PAC member and Federal Minister Riaz Hussain Peerzada said that the nation wanted corruption free society and felt that whatever corruption had been committed was basically done with foreign aids and grants.
He suggested that PAC should be converted into Public Accounts and Accountability Committee by placing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman under its control in order to put all controversies to rest.
TIP Chairman Sohail Mozaffar pointed out that $100 billion of Pakistanis were stashed in the Swiss accounts, and said Pakistan could get back Rs 20 billion if it adopted the procedures of UK, USA and Germany by signing an agreement with the Swiss government, slapping tax on it and depositing it with the country to whom it belonged.
PAC member and MNA Noorul Haq Qadri commended the working of PAC, especially its action to recover the public money from armed forces
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk