LAYYAH, Sept 22: The surfacing of a fake budget book (current expenditure) of the Layyah district government reveals alleged financial bungling to the tune of Rs90 million in the annual budget of 2007-08.

The scam surfaced when supplementary budget proposals were submitted to the district assembly in June 2008 for the appropriation of allocations for different departments. The supplementary budget revealed that millions of rupees remained unspent, while the copy of 2007 budget had showed meager allocations to different heads.

A report presented to the chief minister by District Coordination Officer (DCO) Javed Iqbal states a budget copy with bogus figures was referred to all EDOs in July 2007 and the district accounts office. The actual budget figures were kept secret by the Finance and Planning Department of the district.

The report says: “It was a novel effort to keep all the offices to work under pressure as they had to approach the district offices frequently for their petty needs”.

The DCO initiated a probe into the scam on June 28, when the district accounts officer informed the DCO about the two parallel copies of the current budget. The probe concluded that District Nazim Malik Ghulam Haider Thind had pressured district budget officer Mahr Hafeezullah and budget assistant Ghulam Ali to keep the actual budget figures secret. The bogus copy was prepared which showed a reduction of about Rs90 million against the actual allocation.

In the actual copy of the budget, funds for maintenance and repair of roads are Rs20 million, while the bogus copy shows no allocations for these two heads.

The actual copy of the budget shows Rs40 million for provision, maintenance and repair of buildings and structures while the fake copy shows just Rs10 million for these heads.

Mr Hafeez says that the parallel copy was distributed to all offices because a Rs100 million grant was expected from the provincial government. Had the Punjab government refused the Rs100 million grant, the parallel copy would have been the right one.

Even though, the then government released Rs100 million for the Layyah district, the district accounts officer kept on telling other officials that the Punjab government had yet to release the figures.

The report further says that it was an effort to save funds to gain political mileage in the Feb 28 elections. The district nazim used most of the saved funds for development projects in a Punjab Assembly constituency where from her daughter was a PML-Q candidate.

The report says then accounts officer Mian Muhammad Aslam acted as a facilitator in the scam as he passed 39 bills. The act of the district government paralysed human resources throughout the year and the assets such as buildings and roads remained unattended.

When contacted, District Nazim Thind said that he had done nothing illegal as 11 budget books were published and sent to various departments and were available on Internet.