Troubled Fata agencies No audit of admin accounts for years

The Auditor General of Pakistan Revenues hasn’t audited the income and expenditure accounts of Kurram and North Waziristan tribal agencies’ civil administrations for a long period due to lawlessness and lack of cooperation from the relevant departments, according to officials. Officials have told Dawn that audit of the accounts of political administration and militia in the restive Kurram and North Waziristan agencies hadn’t been undertaken for four and more than five years respectively. “Our auditors could not travel to the two troubled areas owing to lack of security,” said an AGPR official. He said auditors couldn’t travel to Parachinar town in Kurram Agency to audit the administration accounts because the road to this headquarters of the agency had been closed for more than two years due to attacks by militants associated with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. The official said though the auditors could have traveled to Parachinar by air to scrutinise the administration accounts, AGPR selected to keep its auditors away from the troubled area. Same was the case with North Waziristan Agency, where visit by government auditors and civilian officials dealing with the tribal region is not without risk. “We asked them (civil authorities) to send us details of some of their accounts, but they chose not to accept our requests,” the official said. People tasked with auditing the accounts of the government departments and civil administration of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) said they didn’t travel to the restive areas fearing for their lives. According to them, the only viable option for auditing the administration accounts of the two agencies was that the relevant record should be sent to AGPR offices in Peshawar. The auditors, however, said the Kurram and North Waziristan authorities ignored their suggestion and didn’t provide them with the sought-after record and thus, preventing audit. “Had the account books been provided to us, it would have taken a week to audit the accounts of the political agent’s office,” he said. Apart from money provided for undertaking annual development programme in Fata, the civil administration of all seven agencies individually raise revenue of hundreds of millions of rupees through the agency development fund. Under the Federal Government’s General Financial Rules, all government departments, their attached wings and administrative entities are required to get their accounts audited every year by providing their account books to the official auditors.According to the AGPR auditors, they usually audit 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the accounts of all departments. “We can’t scrutinise all accounts due to the availability of tons of information, so we go for selective audit,” said the official. He said that’s why, the civil authorities of the two agencies were asked to provide ‘some’ of their account books and not all. “But they ignored our suggestion,” he said, adding that it had kept an important official obligation to remain unfulfilled, showing weakening governance in tribal areas. “Since we have not seen their accounts, we are not in a position to make any comment on the validity or flaws in their accounts,” said a senior AGPR official. He, however, said the general financial rules were clear about how the government money could be used. “The government’s money cannot be spent on unofficial business and even the government’s land cannot be lent to a school, a religious seminary, or a mosque without required official approval,” said the official. On the basis of their past experience with the Fata authorities, auditors said the political administrations and the relevant militia force authorities had grossly violated financial rules in several instances. Giving an example, an auditor said a CNG (compressed natural gas) station had been established in Peshawar on a land owned by a militia force. He added that the facility was set up without taking the required permission from the federal authorities concerned, said the official. “Whenever we ask for the accounts of the CNG station, they refuse to provide us the accounts, saying these were regimental accounts and hence, the same are not auditable,” said the auditor. He said the matter was discussed at the Public Accounts Committee level, but to no avail.