ISLAMABAD: A National Assembly standing committee has ordered that investigations into Rs500 million corruption cases in Pakistan Postal Services should be completed at the earliest to ensure speedy justice and make the department profitable.

The committee on postal services at a meeting chaired by MNA Syed Iftikharul Hassan was informed on Wednesday that there were 118 embezzlement and robbery cases being investigated by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the Islamabad police.

The documents presented before the com-mittee showed that NAB had been investigating 26 cases worth Rs 227.33 million. Three of these cases involving Rs 31 million belonged to the area under the postmaster general (PMG) Islamabad, two cases worth Rs32 million were from Rawalpindi and seven cases of Rs118 million f rom Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The FIA was investigating 88 cases worth Rs273 million. Two of these cases worth Rs6.9 million were from Islamabad, 11 cases worth Rs38 million from Rawalpindi, 31 cases worth Rs57 million from Lahore, nine cases worth Rs144 million from Balochistan and two cases of Rs6.7 million from the Postal Life Insurance Lahore.

The Islamabad police have been investigating four robbery cases worth Rs4.6 million.An official claimed that the postal department had recovered Rs29 million and NAB Rs12 million so far.

In cases being investigated by the FIA, the postal department recovered Rs 41 million but not a single rupee had been recovered by the FIA.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Secretariat Zohaib Nasrullah Ranjha informed the committee that the cases were being investigated and challans would be submitted to courts soon.

However, the committee chairman expressed annoyance over the pending cases and directed the officials concerned to complete them at the earliest.

The committee also expressed its concernover the non-serious attitude of the FIA and NAB towards the cases. It said due to non-coordination of the ministry with the FIA and NAB the recovery process was affected badly. The committee directed them to prepare a consolidated list of the cases and share it with each other and brief the committee at the next meeting.

Pakistan Post Director General Dr Naseer Ahmed Khan said though the department owns land across the country such as 40 kanals at I. I. Chundrigar Road in Karachi, it cannot use them for commercial purposes.

`We don`t have resources to build buildings.

We were a profitable department till 2009-10 when we started facing losses due to two reasons: the first was a sudden increase of 50pc inthe salaries of staff and the second followed a government decision to withdraw the f acility of issuing national saving certificates by the department. However, we are hopeful that we will get the f acility again,` he said.

`We have 1.4 million pensioners to whom we pay Rs7 billion pension. If the government starts paying the pension to the retired employees we will become a profitable department again,` he said.

In reply to questions from the committee members, Joint Secretary Postal Services Qazi Zaheer Ahmed said for 10 years there had been a ban on appointments in the department. Now it has been decided that hiring would be made in the department so that it can compete with the private courier services.