LAHORE, Aug 14: The National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee on Railways has taken a strong exception to construction of an underpass and leasing out educational institutions for ‘nominal amount’ by the department.
Chairperson Yasmeen Rehman presided over a committee meeting held at the PR headquarters here on Saturday to discuss some 45 audit paras pertaining to the period between 2004 and 2007. Five paras were settled while the remaining were kept pending by the committee.
Terming the Rs18.95 million spent on the construction of an underpass at Sangla Hills ‘unjustified expenditure’ and the schools lease amount nominal, the committee members said no one would be allowed to misuse the railways assets in future.
Comprising Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Sardar Ahmad Zafar and Riaz Fatyana, the committee members were unanimous that the matter should be thoroughly probed into when informed that a former railways minister, Chaudhry Barjis Tahir, had ordered the underpass’ construction.
Railways senior officers had no answer when Ms Rehman asked them as to who authorised the PR to construct underpasses. The amount spent on these underpasses could have been utilised to execute some other projects that would have been beneficial for the railways, she commented.
Regarding leasing out 19 railways’ schools, the committee was informed that the step was taken to ‘improve quality of education’ and ‘reduce financial burden of the organisation’.
The audit report for 2004-05 pointed out that each leased out school had a total area of 81,418 square feet, with covered area of 21,237 sq ft, on an average. The institutions were leased out to M/s Educational Services Limited (ESL) in 2001 for a nominal amount of Rs5,000 per school per month. Ironically, the ESL rented out only canteens of three schools located in Lahore at an average monthly rent of Rs9,167 — around double the total lease amount — besides receiving the security deposit of Rs123,333 for each canteen.
The PAC also took serious note of the absence of the railways property and land director from the meeting and directed the general manager to seek an explanation from the officer in this regard.
Other paras discussed by the committee pertained to non-recovery of Rs0.764 million rent from a firm, loss of Rs11.888 million incurred due to procurement of defective material and resultant damage to locomotives during trial, besides dead inventories valuing Rs34.67 million due to unnecessary purchase of material.
The PAC also asked the railways administration to make the tender process more transparent.
To a question, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq said that the PAC had so far recovered Rs165 billion misappropriated during previous years.Dawn.
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