ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) suggested that the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) upgrade the mechanism for auditing at the federalism government ministries, so minor irregularities are dealt with at the departmental level.

During the scrutiny of the questions raised during an audit of the communications ministry, PAC Chairman Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah suggested that some issues identified could have been settled at the departmental level.

Communications Secretary Shahid A shraf Tarrar said that the ministries have their own internal auditing system and there is a need to improve the mechanism.

He said that the AGP might be asked to streamline the internal audit of his ministry.

`We would welcome any initiative of the AGP for strengthening our audit system,` he added.

AGP Rana Asad Amin informed the committee that chief financial officers (CFO) at each ministry are from the audit group. According to him, the CFOs deal with external audit and have nothing to do with the internal audit of the ministries.

However, he suggested that the CFOs might begiven additional roles for strengthening the internal audit mechanism of every ministry of the federal government.

Subsequently, Mr Shah directed secretary PAC to write letters to all the ministries to accommodate and cooperate with the of ficials of the audit department.

During the PAC meeting, Shah also noted that in a number of instances, the communications ministry faced litigation.

`Do you have any mechanism for dealing with litigation which stops you from taking action against certain contractors or recovering money or even government land,` he asked.

Secretary communications, Mr Tarrar admitted that the legal side of the ministry was weak, due to which the government had lost number of cases in the courts.

The reason for the failure of the government`s lawyer was that the ministry was paying very little fee to the counsel, he said.

He added that for a civil suit at the sessions courts level the fee was Rs15000 and for high court it was Rs30000 per case.

However, he said, that the situation has now been improved as the ministry is engaging good lawyers on comparatively high remuneration. Mr Tarrar claimed that the success rate in related litigation is now 96 per cent.