ISLAMABAD, Jan 13: The Senate Standing Committee on Sports grilled Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) Chairman Ijaz Butt and Chief Operating Officer Saleem Altaf for their failure to control the depleting financial reserves and not coming up with a comparative accounting balance sheet.

The committee, in one of its fieriest sessions yet, reprimanded the PCB officials who seemed to be helpless in the face of challenging and forthright questions which they failed to answer particularly in regard to the recruitment of some newly appointed top officials and creation of new posts by the current management.

The committee, which met at the Senate Secretariat on Tuesday under its chairman Senator Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, has asked the PCB to furnish a comparative accounts statement of last two years of the board in the next meeting, scheduled to be held on Feb 9.

The committee has also summoned former COO Shafqat Naghmi, the technical consultants of the Gaddafi Stadium regarding the development projects and the recently highlighted financial irregularities reported by the media.

About the current financial affairs of the board, the PCB chairman painted a horrible financial picture and said: “The CFO of the board had already resigned and the financial condition of the board is in terrible position.”

When the previous chairman Dr Nasim Ashraf took charge in 2006 the PCB finances stood at Rs3.370 billion and now Ijaz claims it stands at Rs1.51 billion.

About the recent recruitment at the top level Senator Zafar remarked: “You [PCB] didn’t give any advertisement for the new positions and you have to prove it.”

Senator Haroon Khan criticised firing of junior staff by the current management of the board.

Regarding the hiring and firing question, Ijaz pointed out: “No junior official was fired and officials having pay less than Rs0.1 million are still working instead we have fired officials in Special Services Agreement (SSA) cadres.”

Haroon asked that Rs170 million was being paid by the board in salaries can the PCB inform the senate about the salary of PCB’s Director General Javed Miandad.

The PCB chairman replied: “We are currently clearing the position of Miandad, whether he should hold the post of a paid board member or a DG as he is also appointed as an ambassador to China for Cricket”.

To this Senator Tahir Hussain Mashadi added: “This is criminal to learn that a world cricket star and hero of Pakistani nation was not given any salary.”

Mashadi rebuked the PCB chairman: “Don’t run a secret society, run a cricket board.”

Haroon said that the discretion to hire new officials in the board should not rest on one individual (chairman PCB).