Fiscal anarchy

Audit report of HEC for 2013-14 found massive irregularities in salary payments and award of projects to universities

The Oxford English Dictionary defines anarchy as “a state of disorder due to the absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems” — which adequately describes the financial affairs of the Higher Education Commission (HEC). The audit report for 2013-14 has revealed a smorgasbord of irregularities. They range from the payment of membership fees for a former chairman of the HEC to the exclusive Islamabad Club, to the depositing of monies in private accounts that should have gone into the public purse, the appointment of 70 staffers in Lahore to unsanctioned posts, the appointment of the sitting executive director, which did not have the sanction of the prime minister as required and an opaque laptop distribution scheme. The catalogue of irregularities also includes the HEC incurring an expenditure of Rs426 million to the National Research Programme for Universities (NRPU) despite there being no internal policy for the making of awards for projects under the NRPU.

It is not possible to say that all of the irregularities uncovered in the audit were the direct result of corruption; and it is entirely possible that some of them are simply the outcome of incompetence or corner-cutting by the responsible individuals and institutions. The necessary checks and balances that always have to be linked to public expenditures are absent or ignored when it suits, rules bent and blind eyes turned. Although the audit is only relevant to the year 2012-13, it is reasonable to assume that there is a culture of fiscal anarchy within the HEC. These irregularities did not spring up like mushrooms overnight and look in some instances to be institutionalised — as in custom and practice within the HEC. The auditors have done their job and for that, we must be grateful. Draining the fiscal cesspool that is the HEC is quite another matter. It is likely to be highly resistant to any changes in its internal workings and will attempt to justify or refute the findings of the auditors, but if it is to retain any credibility, it needs to wash its fiscal face — and what is more, be seen to be doing so.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2014.

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