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Islamabad Club: Accounts are untouchable | DAWN.COM
Islamabad Club: Accounts are untouchable
From the Newspaper | Khawar Ghumman | 3 hours ago
ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: That the underprivileged feel the privileged thrive on their sweat may be well known but the evidence shocked a parliamentary committee here on Tuesday.
“What!!!” was the unspoken word read on the faces of the members of the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly when they were told that the government-funded Islamabad Club is out of the reach of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP).
PPP MNA Nadeem Afzal Gondal, chairing a PAC meeting on audit affairs, snapped out: “We cannot allow the privileged splash in state-of-the-art swimming pools at the expense of the poor people of the country who don’t even get clean drinking water.”
While discussing a Rs30 million supplementary grant made to the club in 2007 for replacing an existing out-door swimming, the committee members wanted to know how much money the club received over the years and how it spent it. Silence was the answer from the concerned officials attending the meeting.
It was a real shock for the committee to learn that the AGP had absolutely no access to the elitist club.
Additional secretary Asif Ghafoor of the Ministry of National Heritage and Integration had no response when pushed about the status of the club that even AGP could not peep into.
This the new name of the defunct ministry of culture and sports, under whose administrative control Islamabad club used to work. Now the club is under the ministry of capital administration and development.
“Can any one sitting here explain why is the club given money from the national exchequer, when its access is limited to a selected lot of the country?” asked the PAC chairman.
“What to say of availing the club’s facilities, they are out of bound for the common people,” he said.
Yasmin Rehman of the PPP was sympathetic however. She said the committee had no issue how the club was run and who availed its facilities. “But, once it received money from the national kitty, the club could not escape audit. The committee cannot ignore such massive spending,” she added.
Engineer Khurram Dastagir of the PML-N said he was flabbergasted by the revelation that government money could be splurged without any accountability. “One shouldn’t hope for anything positive if the current state of affairs in the country persists,” he said.
An AGP officer explained that the chief executive of the country has the authority to award supplementary grants, which the ministry of finance has to release.
But the officer had no satisfactory answer to the PAC members’ question why could not the accounts of the Islamabad Club be audited?
In the end, the committee sought clarification from the concerned department who actually managed the club, and what was the government’s involvement if its accounts were ‘not auditable’.
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Let's see what the fauj-mongers has to say about this.
Islamabad Club: Accounts are untouchable
From the Newspaper | Khawar Ghumman | 3 hours ago
ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: That the underprivileged feel the privileged thrive on their sweat may be well known but the evidence shocked a parliamentary committee here on Tuesday.
“What!!!” was the unspoken word read on the faces of the members of the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly when they were told that the government-funded Islamabad Club is out of the reach of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP).
PPP MNA Nadeem Afzal Gondal, chairing a PAC meeting on audit affairs, snapped out: “We cannot allow the privileged splash in state-of-the-art swimming pools at the expense of the poor people of the country who don’t even get clean drinking water.”
While discussing a Rs30 million supplementary grant made to the club in 2007 for replacing an existing out-door swimming, the committee members wanted to know how much money the club received over the years and how it spent it. Silence was the answer from the concerned officials attending the meeting.
It was a real shock for the committee to learn that the AGP had absolutely no access to the elitist club.
Additional secretary Asif Ghafoor of the Ministry of National Heritage and Integration had no response when pushed about the status of the club that even AGP could not peep into.
This the new name of the defunct ministry of culture and sports, under whose administrative control Islamabad club used to work. Now the club is under the ministry of capital administration and development.
“Can any one sitting here explain why is the club given money from the national exchequer, when its access is limited to a selected lot of the country?” asked the PAC chairman.
“What to say of availing the club’s facilities, they are out of bound for the common people,” he said.
Yasmin Rehman of the PPP was sympathetic however. She said the committee had no issue how the club was run and who availed its facilities. “But, once it received money from the national kitty, the club could not escape audit. The committee cannot ignore such massive spending,” she added.
Engineer Khurram Dastagir of the PML-N said he was flabbergasted by the revelation that government money could be splurged without any accountability. “One shouldn’t hope for anything positive if the current state of affairs in the country persists,” he said.
An AGP officer explained that the chief executive of the country has the authority to award supplementary grants, which the ministry of finance has to release.
But the officer had no satisfactory answer to the PAC members’ question why could not the accounts of the Islamabad Club be audited?
In the end, the committee sought clarification from the concerned department who actually managed the club, and what was the government’s involvement if its accounts were ‘not auditable’.
--------------
Let's see what the fauj-mongers has to say about this.
