Misuse of cars: Loopholes reverse gains from austerity measures

Govt ends up increasing expenses due to misconduct and miscalculation.

LAHORE:

Austerity measures introduced by the previous government have virtually backfired as bureaucrats continue to milk policy loopholes, especially regarding the provision of transportation facilities to officers of grades 20 till 22, The Express Tribune has learnt.

In December 2012, the Cabinet Division of the previous Pakistan Peoples Party-led government issued the “Compulsory Monetisation of Transport Facility for Civil Servants in BPS-20 to BPS-22” notification.

According to it, the transport monetisation policy aimed to eliminate any possibility of misuse of official vehicles as well as to restrict the maintenance expenditure of the vehicles to a bare minimum.



Following this, well-maintained cars were sold to bureaucrats at throwaway prices – ranging from Rs200,000 to Rs300,000 – and perks, such as fuel allowance and provision of drivers, withheld. The government shed the responsibility of maintaining cars provided to the officers to save overhead costs, explained an official.

However, government officers continue to use cars from the transport pool of their respective government departments, increasing expenses.

“Some officers have parked the cars, sold to them by the government, in their houses or given to their families to use, while they continue to drive the cars available in the departmental offices on some pretext or another,” the official told The Express Tribune.

The transport monetisation policy has a loophole: it allows for the use of departmental cars and additional resources for maintenance under “operational duty”, “project duty”, etc.

The officers are still drawing funds from the public exchequer for additional POL expenses, maintenance and repair charges, while the drivers initially recruited for the civil servants before the promulgation of the monetisation policy are still drawing salaries and other perks from the treasury.

Irregularities unearthed

Losses incurred due to the depreciation and misuse of official cars have been calculated to be Rs14.54 million by the Auditor General of Pakistan during the audit of 14 federal government ministries/divisions and attached departments.



As part of the self-liquidation process, cars that were sold to officers at throwaway prices, which are usually calculated keeping in mind the annual depreciation of the car.

However, according to the audit report available with The Express Tribune, the Cabinet Division Audit team observed that the price of eight vehicles that were sold was calculated by including the depreciation rate of only one year, instead of calculating from the date of the car’s registration. This resulted in a loss of Rs0.5 million to the national exchequer.

Moreover, during the audit of Polyclinic Islamabad it was observed that eight vehicles were handed over to officers without the recommendation of the replacement committee already constituted in the ministries, divisions and departments. The monetisation policy was not applicable to the doctors employed by federal government’s Polyclinic Islamabad as they were already drawing health allowance from January 1, 2012.

Similarly, the process of monetisation of vehicles conducted by the Establishment Division was irregular as well, causing a loss of Rs2.25 million, while the incorrect calculation of the vehicles’ depreciation resulted in the loss of Rs110,000.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2014.