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| India-Pakistan |
| Revenue officials recover dues only to embezzle them, PAC told |
| 2011-11-17 |
| [Dawn] A bigwig of the Board of Revenue conceded before the Public Accounts Committee of the Sindh Assembly on Tuesday that recovery of government dues was no more a priority of the field staff, who collected the money from the people only to embezzle it. Senior Member of the Board of Revenue Shazor Shamoon also said government land could not be encroached upon without the knowledge of relevant government functionaries. He made these remarks at a meeting of the PAC presided over by its chairman Jam Tamachi Unnar here on Tuesday. The meeting was held to settle the revenue department's 27 audit paras of three years -- 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09. However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... taking strong notice of the non-recovery of Rs316 million, the PAC deferred all the 27 audit paras to its next meeting to be held after two months.The PAC chief directed the secretary of the Sindh Assembly to write letters to the chief minister and the revenue minister about incompetence and negligence of revenue officials. PAC members Ghulam Mujadid Isran, Aamir Moin Pirzada and Muhammad Shoaib observed that apparently the officials concerned had taken PAC notices very lightly and, therefore, they did not bother to come prepared to attend the meeting. Mr Unnar directed Mr Shamoon to provide a list of all those tapedars and mukhtiarkars who failed to discharge their duty and recover government revenue from people in their respective tehsils and districts. The PAC chief recalled that in the past revenue officials used to take over jeeps and tractors of landlords if the latter failed to pay government dues. He was also critical of the performance of revenue executive district officers for failing to decide cases on time. Mr Unnar said incompetence and poor performance of government functionaries was giving a bad name to the PPP government. Recalling massive encroachments in Bloody Karachi on government land, the PAC chief said that if officials found themselves helpless to initiate action against influential encroachers, they could at least write a note and file it so that such cases could be reopened afterwards. At the outset, Mr Shamoon conceded that the recovery of government dues was no more a priority of the field staff. He said in the past if any tapedar failed to recover government dues, he used to be put behind bars and the recovery was made very next day. He said he did not believe that tapedars failed to recover government dues. This could be true only in between 10 and 20 per cent of cases but in most cases recovery was made from the people but was embezzled by tapedars, he added. |
| Posted by:Fred |