KARACHI, Jan 12: The first meeting of the Public Accounts Committee of the Sindh Assembly was held on Monday in which the accounts for the year 2003 and 2004 of the agriculture department were considered.

The meeting was presided over by the committee’s chairman, Jam Tamachi, and attended by most members.

The committee took up the audit comments one after the other. However, Agriculture Secretary Subhago Khan Jatoi did not bring with him the evidence and documents supporting the justification for excess expenditures as pointed out by the auditors in their report. Therefore, the committee decided to defer the proceedings till Jan 29.

The committee also directed the secretary to come up with evidence on the next date of meeting so that he could respond to the queries of the members of the committee.

The participants of the meeting decided to approach the Sindh chief secretary for the review of a notification issued by the Services and General Administration Department (S&GAD) authorising only the district coordination officers to auction off ramshackle vehicles and other agricultural machinery rusting at the engineering workshop.

The committee suggested that in accordance with the federal government’s rules, the secretary of each department should be authorised to auction off such vehicles and other machinery in a transparent manner. The committee was of the view that millions of rupees could be fetched by holding a timely auction of unusable machinery which were not only lying in the agriculture department’s workshop and outside but could also be seen in and around almost every government department.

The committee also decided to write another letter to the chief secretary asking him to depute a grade 19 officer of the finance department in every department of the provincial government for internal audit and control.