NA finance committee meets today

ISLAMABAD, March 31: The National Assembly Finance Committee will meet here today (Friday) to discuss its budget proposals for the next financial year and to grant ex-post facto approval to a number of decisions which Speaker Fehmida Mirza has been taking since the committee met last time in mid 2010, Dawn has learnt. Being the highest decision-making body for the National Assembly secretariat, all the decisions related to its administration and financial affairs need to be approved by the finance committee, which is chaired by speaker National Assembly. Director General NA Public Relations Anjum Mughal while talking to Dawn confirmed that the finance committee meeting had been convened on Friday but expressed his ignorance about its agenda items. However, sources in the National Assembly secretariat said that apart from discussing budgetary proposals for the next financial year, a number of officials of the house who had been granted extensions by Dr Mirza would be given ex-post facto approval. Secretary Karamat Hussain Niazi who has been given an unprecedented fifth extension after his retirement in 2006 by Speaker Dr Mirza, is also likely to get approval of the finance committee. Talking to Dawn , Engineer Khurram Dastagir of the PML-N who is also member of the finance committee said, "I don`t expect anything new in this finance committee meeting where ex-post facto approval would be given to various decisions taken by the speaker National Assembly." However, he said that he would persist with his earlier stance of opposing this kind of decision making. "Instead of carrying on with retired employees on extensions, the house needs young blood to improve its performance, but sadly they are getting regular extensions by the speaker," Mr Dastagir added. He said that strict oversight of the National Assembly`s administrative and financial affairs should be the major concern of the finance committee which he said unfortunately was not being done properly. However, he said, he would try his level best to pursue other members of the committee to strictly review cases of officials who were on extensions. Moreover, he said, after the Supreme Court ruling on retired employees, in which the apex court had asked the government to strictly observe rules before awarding any extension in their service, his stance got further strengthened. Director General, NA Public Relations Anjum Mughal, Secretary to the Speaker Talib Javed Hussain, Public Accounts Committee`s Joint Secretary Najma Siddiqui, Joint Secretary of Legislation Latif Qureshi, Deputy Secretary Tariq Bhatti and Deputy Secretary Sultan Ahmed are all working on contract basis in the National Assembly. As per section 14 of the Civil Servant Act 1973, "a retired civil servant shall not be re-employed under the federal government, unless such re-employment is necessary in the public interest and is made with the prior approval of the authority next to the appointing authority". Once superannuated and re-employed on a certain contract, efficiency and discipline rules of the government do not apply to them as their annual confidential reports are not written. Therefore, naturally their commitment and dedication to the job cannot be judged or evaluated like those of regular employees of a certain establishment. Therefore, under the rules, extensions could only be given under extraordinary circumstances and for that a case should be moved six months in advance, but at the Parliament House, most of the extensions are endorsed with ex post facto.