KOHAT: The engineering branch of the tehsil municipal administration has handed over 150 files of tainted projects to the special audit team, sources said on Tuesday.

They said the TMA’s engineering branch had been refusing to give files for a week to the audit team and raised objections by writing to the auditor general office, Peshawar, to replace its members alleging that they were demanding bribe.

The sources quoted the tehsil nazim Malik Taimoor as saying that head of the engineering branch, Laal Ghaffar, and members of the special audit team, Fayyaz Khan and Said Rasool, exchanged hot words after the former refused to give them the files.

Earlier, the municipal body had refused to hand over files

They said the audit team was told that the files were with the local council board and would take time to be returned back. To a question that the AG office, Peshawar had sent a director to resolve the matter, they said no representative from AG branch had come to settle the dispute.

Mudassir Khan, who works in the accounts office, however, confirmed that a director Anwar Khan from the AG office had visited the TMA office on Monday after the matter was reported to the auditor general office to settle the issue.

He said the TMA had written to AG office that the team should be changed as it was trying to blackmail them, but the director made it clear that the same team would conduct the audit.

The issue was sorted out on Monday, and on Tuesday, engineering branch’s head Mr Ghaffar handed over some 150 files to the audit team with a condition that the audit would be done in the TMA office and not a single file would be taken to the audit office in KDA, Mr Mudassir said, adding a room had been allotted to the audit team.

Special audit team member Said Rasool told Dawn on telephone that the TMA officials were afraid of their corruption and tried their utmost to hide it by refusing to hand over the projects’ files.

Meanwhile, the TMA and the tehsil nazim have requested the AG branch to assign another team for audit because they did not trust the present one.

The audit team is investigating Rs560 million beautification projects, double and triple payments of same schemes, Rs20 million recycling plant, Rs40 million family park, Rs40 million payment of pledged money to contractor of new vegetable market who fled after leaving the work incomplete and auction of cattle market.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2018