TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Though the comptroller and auditor General (CAG) of India unearths irregularities that result in several crore rupees loss due to faulty functioning of various state government departments, the government does not seem to take these seriously. The CAG has now directed the government to take action against its officials for failing to enforce accountability and fix faults.
The CAG in its report 2012-13 tabled in the house on Wednesday has slammed the government and the senior department heads over their failure to reply to the inspection reports. CAG has pointed out that there are total 120 inspection reports, incorporating irregularities amounting to Rs 196.72 crores, that have remained outstanding till June-end 2013. For June 2011, a total of 66 inspection report are pendig while in 2012, 76 reports were pending.
“This large pendency of inspection reports due to non-receipts of replies is indicative of the fact that the heads of offices and heads of departments did not initiate action to rectify defects, omissions and irregularities pointed out by the accountant general (AG) in the reports,” the CAG report reads.
The CAG has recommended that the government take suitable steps to install an effective procedure for prompt and appropriate response to audit observations and take action against the officials who did not send replies to the inspection reports as per the prescribed time schedules and those who did not take action to recover loss and outstanding demand in a time-bound manner.
CAG has observed that no audit committee meetings were held during the year 2012-13. The AG conducts periodical inspections of the government departments to test-check the transactions and verify the maintenance of the important accounts and other records.
Whenever the reports are placed in the assembly, the media faithfully reports them for weeks, but in vain, as the purpose is not served. Moreover, there is no follow up action on the reports of the CAG, once they are tabled in the assembly.
The usual system is that while preparing the CAG reports, the CAG seeks clarifications and replies from the concerned departments on the various underlined anomalies within six weeks of submitting the report. The reports are then forwarded to the secretaries of the concerned departments.
