Discrepancies found in audit of UT chief engineer’s office

The audit for the period of April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022 was conducted by a team supervised by Senior Audit Officer (SAO) Lalit Mohan Mahajan. Assistant Audit Officers (AAOs) Ravinder Kumar, Ramesh Chander and Shiv Parkash Khandelwal were members of the audit team. The audit department has shared the objections with the UT administration seeking clearance over the raised points.

Other discrepancies include the maintenance of cash books without signature of concerned officers, closing of cash books every month without mentioning of the balances, and starting of next months’ cash books without mentioning the balances of the previous months.

On the objections raised during the inspection Chief Engineer CB Ojha said that it is not possible to supply all the relevant information to the audit team.

“The audit team send us objections and we send them the replies. So far, I cannot comment particularly on all the objection but I know the replies on all the objections were submitted. There is no major issue with our department,” Ojha added.

The audit team also found that no physical inspection, which is necessary on the part of chief engineer, of the fixed assets and consumable items was carried out for the period of 2021-22, resulting in excess or shortage in the fixed assets and consumable items.

“The audit team points that the chief engineering department has decided to execute work as per the CPWD Work Manual, instead of Punjab PWD Manual and Specification and common schedule of rate,” Sector 27 resident RK Garg, who accessed the documents from the UT administration said. However, the extension to the previous hired contractor was given and new contractors were not invited for the reasons ‘The adoption of Punjab PWD 2016 still awaited for the adoption of criteria’.”

The audit team pointed that the extension was granted by the Superintendent Engineer, Construction Circle to the contractor stating that Approval of Punjab PWD 2016 is still awaited for adoption of criteria without conducting tendering process was not tenable as CPWD Manual came into existence since 2008. “Further extension was given citing Covid-19 pandemic,” the team added.

The audit also observed that four of the employees of UT engineering office were on leave for more than 10 days but they claimed mobile allowances of Rs 2,250 for this period.
Other inconsistencies:

The cash book was not signed by the DDO at the end of the month and no certificate was given at the end of the month. The cash book was maintained in the form of register and only payments were recorded. No recipients were written on receipt sides and no deduction of bills was mentioned on the receipt side.