K-P Ehtesab Commission’s expenses less than sanctioned amount

Director General says panel spent a moderate Rs640 million during last four years

PESHAWAR: With reports circulating that the provincial accountability commission had cost the exchequer Rs1 billion, the chief of the soon-to-be-defunct body contradicted the reports, terming them as “factually incorrect”.

Instead, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission’s (K-PEC) director general has claimed that the commission had a spent a more moderate Rs640 million.

This was disclosed as K-PEC director-general wrote to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chief secretary explaining the reports circulating in sections of the media.



The letter, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune, highlights the contribution made by the K-PEC since its establishment in 2014 via an act passed by the K-P assembly.

It notes that the commission instituted 30 references in the Ehtesab Courts (accountability courts) over embezzlement of Rs3.78 billion with 113 suspects implicated.

It added that in the four years it operated, the commission had disposed of more than 2,500 complaints and saved more than Rs1 billion through what they called were good-governance initiatives and interventions in ongoing projects without filling any references in the court.

Regarding the money released by the government for the commission, the director general conceded that while the government had released Rs998.3 million — just shy of a billion rupees, over the past four years, he reminded that the body had only spent Rs639.57 million while the remaining Rs258.8 million were surrendered to the government’s kitty.

The letter went on to provide a year-wise breakdown of the money released and claimed to have saved Rs254.8 million during this time.

It added that Rs510 million was spent on paying the salaries and allowances of the commission’s 148 employees — including 107 employees hired on regular basis and 41 on contract — and around Rs50 million were spent on its assets.

Last week, the K-P government in its first cabinet meeting had decided to shut down the K-PEC which triggered criticism on the K-P government over its failure to keep up the accountability watchdog.

Political opponents of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had criticised the provincial government for wasting the public’s money on a project which it could not keep moving.



Last week, after the cabinet’s meeting, the government’s spokesperson Shaukat Yousafzai had told the media that the commission had done its job.

“We had an institution (referring to the NAB) which was not in our reach so we established it [K-P Ehtesab Commission],” he had said.

The government spokesperson said that instead of the ehtesab commission, they will be strengthening the K-P Anti-Corruption Establishment apart from empowering the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Moreover, he disclosed that the K-P law department would prepare a procedure to decide the fate of cases and references pending with the provincial accountability body.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2018.