Performance reports: Parliamentary panels dodge details

Standing committees in NA submit sketchy information about work

ISLAMABAD: A number of parliamentary panels have presented ‘outdated and insufficient’ performance reports in the National Assembly merely to fulfil legal obligations.

The standing committees are required to submit bi-annual progress reports in the legislative house, describing the outcomes of the decisions taken within their scope of working.

The reports submitted last week, however, do not provide any detailed information and instead focus on the number of meetings held and the agenda taken up during them. Whatever the discussions achieved is little known.

For instance, the report of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Cabinet states the panel has directed the Establishment Division to provide details of all civil servants serving or having served in donor agencies, international non-profit organisations or financial institutions in the past 10 years.

Whether or not the panel was successful in getting the required information is not known, as the report does not include any information on what happened afterwards.

The report of the committee on states and frontier regions (SAFRON) said it asked the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) administration and political agent to attend phone calls of lawmakers and return calls at the earliest if the call went unanswered.

The same panel also claimed of reviewing many development projects of Fata. But the report does not provide the details of a briefing pledged by the federal government on Rs100 billion grants for Fata. It is also silent on the outcome of these assurances by the government.

Earlier the defence ministry panel had confessed it could not resolve a land demarcation controversy between lawmakers and the cantonment administration in Havelian, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Conflict of interest

The committee on cabinet affairs, headed by MNA Rana Muhammad Hayat Khan, had been told a number of top bureaucrats were minting money by extending their services to non-governmental organisations or foreign agencies, often at the cost of their public offices and in violation of rules.

These officials were said to be working with foreign donor agencies on high salaries without prior permission of parent departments in violation of service rules. Some officials were alleged to have offshore bank accounts, apparently to hide their income details and evade tax.

While discussing a proposed amendment in the Civil Servants (Amendment) Act 2014, the panel had directed the establishment division to provide the complete data of any officers of Grade-17 and above, serving in different non-profit organisations without prior approval of the competent authority.

Pakistan Peoples Party’s lawmaker Sughra Imam was the mover of the bill that sought to ensure this practice of outsourcing Pakistani civil servants be disbanded.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 29^th,  2016.