Pendency of governments' audit reports with Parliament delays accountability: AAG

An Additional Auditor General (AAG) on Wednesday said that pendency of audit reports with the Parliament delayed accountability of federal, provincial and district governments.
Briefing Senate's Standing Committee on Finance here, Additional Auditor General, Tanvir Ahmed, said that audit reports were pending with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly and PACs of the provincial assemblies whereas, the Balochistan government has not bothered to even constitute the public accounts committee during the last four and half years. Tanvir Ahmed further stated that PAC of the National Assembly has taken up the audit report for 2006-07. As a result, he said, the accountability and recovery process was facing a delay.
The PAC of the National Assembly has not taken up the audit report of incumbent government for accountability whereas audit report for 2011-12 was submitted to the President, relating to accounts of federation for laying before the National Assembly. Senior officials of AGP said that the AGP was being regulated through presidential ordinances and no government has considered it important to cover it under the Act of the Parliament. He said that now a law is being prepared which would be taken up with the law Ministry. Tanvir said that the AGP is working under the Ministry of Finance and has to conduct the audit of the Finance Ministry. Tanvir Ahmed said that there was no mechanism of internal audit of ministries, division and departments. In reply to a question, he said that the AGP was also conducting audit of secret and discretionary funds and directed that all the secret and discretionary funds should be included in the audit plan for 2012-13.
He said audit reports of the AGP detected that a minister has distributed all the secret fund of his ministry among his relatives. On knowing that an amount of Rs 1.875 trillion was placed under audit observation during the audit year 2011-12, Senator Sughra Imam remarked that such a huge amount reflects of gross financial mismanagement in the system. She said that the amount reported by the AGP does not reflect performance of the present government well.