Audit: Govt gets until May 9 to respond

The petitioner’s counsel said the audit reports had never been presented to the PAC

LAHORE:

Justice Shahid Waheed of Lahore High Court on Wednesday gave a final chance to the government to file a reply by May 9 on a petition on its failure to submit audit reports of district governments to the Public Accounts Committee.

The judge had earlier directed the advocate general to explain submission of a four-year-old audit report signed by then Punjab governor Sardar Latif Khan Khosa by a law officer.

Sheraz Zaka, the petitioner’s counsel, had pointed out that the report submitted by the government carried the signature of a former governor. He said the audit reports had never been presented to the PAC.

He said the auditor general of Pakistan had written a letter to the governor on September 7, 2012 and had reminded him to submit the audit reports before the Public Accounts Commitee.

He said the letter was also forwarded to the chief minister. He said that the office of the auditor general had also written to the finance secretary on June 4, 2014, to submit the audit reports for the years 2001-2002 to 2012-2013.

He said that the PAC was told in a meeting on September 15, 2015 that the audit reports of the district governments had been received from the governor’s office and been submitted to the chief minister but the reports had not been placed before the committee so far.

He said this was a violation of Section 108 of the Punjab Local Government Act.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th,  2016.