MUZAFFARABAD, July 18: Setting new traditions of “open- handedness”, the Azad Kashmir government has approved “honorarium” not only for the entire staff of the finance and planning and development departments but also for dozens of other employees for their “hard work” on preparation of 2008-09 budget, it has been learnt.

Though the employees of finance and planning and development departments, associated with the task of budget preparation, have been claiming “honorarium” for their “drudgery” in this regard in the past, but it was for the first time that the government had sanctioned honorarium not only for the entire staff of the two departments but also for the chosen ones in president and prime minister’s secretariat, S&GAD and chief secretary’s office, raising eyebrows in several quarters, sources told Dawn.

Interestingly all notifications to this effect were issued surreptitiously and were not even circulated to the ministers/advisers concerned whose names were mentioned thereupon as recipients of carbon copies, the sources said.

One such notification, issued by the P&D department and obtained by Dawn, revealed that honoraria to all 170 officials of P&D department and 27 of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat was provided from a development scheme in what many believed was impermissible in rules.

According to the notification, Rs7.242 million incurred on honoraria were borne from “strengthening of research and statistics in P&D department” - an approved development scheme of 2007-08.

The notification only mentioned the amount, varying from Rs192,000 to Rs2500, against each recipient but gave no details as to who had got how many months’ basic salary as ‘honorarium.’

However, in the finance department, majority of its 127- member staff, from secretary to peons, had received honoraria equivalent to their basic pay of six months.

Officials of the department asserted that funds for honoraria were drawn from a budgetary allocation for the purpose. The officials claimed that total spending on provision of honorarium in their department was nearly Rs4 million but declined to provide the copy of relevant notification.

One official confided to Dawn on condition of anonymity that “only three or four copies of notification were printed and could hardly be found anywhere”. Even the finance minister had not been formally provided the notification, his office confirmed to this correspondent.

In the S&GAD, 34 employees and in the chief secretary’s office 21 employees benefited from the honorarium for their “contribution to preparation of budget”.

The honorarium to these (55) employees, which equalled to their three-month salary, was drawn from a “saving” in S&GAD’s non-developmental budget. However, the exact amount could not be ascertained.

Similarly, over a dozen employees of president secretariat and nearly three employees of health secretariat had also received honorarium by courtesy of the government, according to sources.

It may be recalled here that former prime minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat had plainly refused to sanction honorarium for the entire staff of finance and P&D departments, let alone employees of other departments, saying that the government was paying salaries, perks and privileges to its servants for the very job they were claiming honoraria for.

The finance department officials however claimed that they were receiving honorarium in accordance with a cabinet decision, taken in late eighties.

It may be mentioned here that the Legislative Assembly staff had also obtained honorarium, equivalent to their one month’s basic pay, for “additional work” during budget session apart from the overtime which they regularly claim during each sitting of the house.