By Tanveer Ahmed
ISLAMABAD: Public Accounts Committee (PAC)’s Monitoring and Implementation Committee Tuesday grinded Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) and Pakistan State Oil (PSO) for not following the financial rules in awarding the contracts and giving the advances against any particular project.
The committee’s meeting chaired by MNA Yasmeen Rahman expressed its annoyance over the non-serious attitude on the part of officials of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Resources and particularly its attached departments PSO and OGDC, whose officials are not prepared to respond to the queries from the committee’s members. Committee meeting was held to consider the progress on the implementation of directives about the audit points of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources. Meeting was attended by MNA Haider Abbas Rizvi, MNA Raza Hayat Haraj, Secretary Petroleum Imtiaz Qazi, officials of ministry, PSO and OGDC and audit general of Pakistan office.
During the entire meeting, it was obvious that OGDC and PSO officials were not fully prepared to answer the points raised by the committee and even in some cases expressed their ignorance to matters, which were purely pertains to them. Committee’s chairperson expressing her annoyance said that officials seem “disinterested in the proceedings of the committee and are least bothered to respond to the queries.”
She pointed out that giving big sums of money in advances has been identified in the audit accounts of these departments and there was not any mechanism to ensure their transparency. Haider Abbas Rizvi in his observations said that the issue is not that huge amounts are involved but it clearly reflects on the part of these organisations that bad decision-making is prevailing, which often causes the national exchequer huge losses.
The PSO officials were so ill-prepared that they could not even tell the committee as how much is paid to lawyers to fight the cases, which are in litigation. This irked Haider Abbas Rizvi who sounded bitter and said that it is public money, which has been used mercilessly without having any check.
Yasmeen Rahman directed Secretary Petroleum to streamline the financial rules regarding payments made in advances, which often causes losses to national kitty. The contention of PSO’ representative was that there were no such rules countered by Auditor General Office—which pointed out that there are laws which prescribe only 10-15 percent advance against bank guarantees instead of 100 percent as has been practiced by PSO in various cases.
Secretary Petroleum assured that committee that ministry would come up with the detailed and thorough replies regarding various anomalies raised by the committee and would put in place the rules to streamline the payment of advances against bank guarantees.
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