Daily Times

KARACHI: Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has disclosed financial irregularities after audit and inspection of the accounts record of Director Enforcement, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), for financial year 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16, officials of Director General Audit, Local Councils Sindh, have informed.

This has been the first-ever audit of Director Land Enforcement, KMC, since its inception in 2013.

The audit team headed by Sagheer Ahmad Chandio, Audit Officer of Director General Audit, Local Councils Sindh, conducted audit and inspection of accounts during December 12 to 23, 2016.

The team found enormous financial irregularities, including non-maintenance of cash books, non-transparency in expending, non-recovery on various accounts, non-achievement of targeted receipts, non-reconciliation of revenue collection, irregular and unauthorised appointments and payment of salaries, and data missing in pay slips.

The auditors’ team, by revealing massive corruption and irregularities worth billions of rupees, has termed this act to weak financial management and internal control.

The audit team observed that the KMC Department has failed in achieving budget targets of these three years in question. Less recovery of Rs 280 million stood in 2013,14, Rs 480 million in 2014-15 and Rs 403 million was noticed in 2015-16 against the approved budget of Rs 348 million, Rs 520 million and Rs 430 million respectively on head of taxes, rates, tolls and other fees mentioned in schedule V.

Audit is of the view that records were not provided to audit and resultantly authenticity of expenditures could not be verified.

It was observed that concerned management made expenditure from different heads but failed to maintain cash books, deviation from prescribed rules and procedures, non-collection of receipts, reconciling of collections and non-transparency in into recruitments.

The members of the audit team have described that due to huge anomalies and absence and non-maintaining of books, audit cold not authenticate the veracity of bonafide government officials in the absence of muster roll and a proper payroll.

During these three periods audited, targeted receipts of Rs 1.297 billion of Land Enforcement KMC could not be achieved and less recovery to the tune of around Rs 1.17 billion has been recorded.

During audit of three years, Rs 10.64 million had been overpaid on head of house rent allowance, Rs 10.86 million unauthorised salaries were paid, around Rs 10 million were spent on purchase of petroleum, oil and lubricants products for official vehicles without maintaining log books, vehicles maintenance record, petrol account registers and history sheets.

Similarly, Director Land Enforcement KMC failed to produce financial records of three audit years, budget and expenditure statements, details of appointments, recovery challan books, log books, personal files, and service books of staff, cash books and maintenance lists and removal of encroachments.

The audit recommended fixing of responsibility on management for unauthorised and malpractices in a number of account heads.

Abdul Malik Khan, M Moin Khan and M Bilal Manzar held the charge of administrative and financial control for the period 2013-14, 20114-15 and 2015-16 respectively.

The DG Audit, Local Council Sindh, Karachi is responsible to carry out the audits of secretary, Local Government Department, KMC, KWSB and 105 municipal committees, town committee/unions councils.