مضمون کا ماخذ : کوئٹہ لاٹری
Senate body expresses anger at irregularities in FATA Directorate
ISLAMABAD: A legislative body of Upper House of Parliament on Tuesday found gross irregularities in all appointments made in the FATA Directorate of Monitoring and Evaluation. The directorate is the only watchdog available in FATA. It is mandated with monitoring development work and other affairs. The committee had asked for the original and subsequent revised […]
ISLAMABAD: A legislative body of Upper House of Parliament on Tuesday found gross irregularities in all appointments made in the FATA Directorate of Monitoring and Evaluation.
The directorate is the only watchdog available in FATA. It is mandated with monitoring development work and other affairs. The committee had asked for the original and subsequent revised PC-1s, indicating the initial and later created posts and the mode and procedure in which those posts were filled. It also sought details of the expenditures incurred by the directorate’s drawing and disbursing officer (DDO) and his competency in doing so.
At the outset of Tuesday’s meeting, Senator Hilalur Rehman, the committee chairman, pointed out that the record submitted seemed fictitious and tampered with. “The original PC-1 of 2006 contained the post of the director general, a position which was created in 2011; five years after the inception of the directorate,” he said.
The officials from FATA, including Additional Chief Secretary Capt (r) Sikandar Qayyum, were clueless about the submission of fictitious documents. DG Sajjad Ahmad also expressed ignorance over the submission of the said document.
The chairman and the committee members expressed strong reservations over the fictitious documents. In the documents, the directorate was headed by a director level officer, assisted by three deputy directors and supporting staff.
The posts of DG and three directors were then created in 2011 by a subsequent revision of the project document. However, FATA Secretariat could not share any advertisement, details of shortlisted candidates by a selection committee, approval of appointment to newly-created posts by the competent authority, contract agreements and offer letters as enshrined in the Project Policy 2008. Instead the DG defended his posting without providing any document mandated by the project policy, he could not furnish even his contract agreement and offer letter for the post of director general.
Whereas the project policy 2008, which was in force at the time, categorically states that the procedures to fill newly-created posts through initial recruitment vide section 3 of the said policy. The chairman indicated that there was no provision for project employees to claim promotions or up gradations in the said project policy. Referring to the project policy, the committee noted with grave concern that the directorate was being run in project mode since 2006 at the cost of development budget of FATA. So far, a total of Rs 300 million had been expended on the directorate in lieu of salaries, TA/DA and other expenses of just 35 staff members.
The committee referred to figures obtained from FATA Secretariat, citing a total of around Rs 4 billion (20 percent) expenditure on salary-based projects from the FATA Annual Development Programme of Rs 24.5 billion. The result of such inconsistent expenses owing to non-approval of freshly created posts was causing wastage of funds earmarked for developmental purposes. However, officials from FATA blamed the Finance Division for non-approval of new posts through schedules for new expenditure (SNEs) for FATA. However, the chairman disagreed and referring to section 10(vi) of the Project Policy 2008, which could not allow for adjustment of project employees against posts once they were regularised and that such regularised posts were to be filled through the respective public service commissions. The project employees were contract employees and regularisation of these posts would not mean an automatic recruitment of them to those posts.
Published in Daily Times, December 6th 2017.
