Inquiry ordered into payments by ITIs

CHANDIGARH, Oct 27: The Punjab Technical Education Director has ordered a preliminary inquiry into all payments made from June 1998 onwar...

CHANDIGARH, Oct 27: The Punjab Technical Education Director has ordered a preliminary inquiry into all payments made from June 1998 onwards in respect of the purchase of machinery and equipment by various Industrial Training Institutes. It is alleged that all payments for equipment and machinery amounting to Rs 2.50 crore made so far to different ITIs of the state Ludhiana, Amritsar, Ferozepur, Hoshiarpur, Nanagal, Patiala, Bathinda, Fazilka, Jalandhar, Ropar, Rajpura and Bassi Pathana among others have been disbursed without adhering to proper procedure.

It may be recalled that the project was prepared and implemented for the modernisation and improvement of the functioning of the ITIs, a few years back. Fifty per cent of expenditure incurred on the machineries and equipment is being borne by the state government.

Financial sanctions have been endorsed to respective ITI principals; now the office of the Deputy Director World Bank posted here is investigating the books. To date, Technical Education Directorate accountants have not been questioned.

The officials told ENS that over the past three months bills relating to purchases of machinery and equipment under the project had not been cleared. Even project staff salaries are not being released by the District Treasury Officer for want of Finance Department clearance.

Reacting to this, Director, Punjab Technical Education N.S. Kalsi, said that staff salary under the plan scheme would be released within this month. He, meantime, attributed the problem to the delay in state government clearance. According to Kalsi: quot;An inquiry has been set up to go into the allegations and a report is expected by the end of the monthquot;. He described the dispute as quot;intra-departmental involving the Finance and Technical staffquot;.

Officials concerned explained that the inquiry has been marked to investigate whether World Bank Project fund utilisation has been authorised by the competent authority. It is learnt that officials inquiring in to the alleged purchase irregularities have been asked to find out why the District Treasury Officer has declined to accept the bills.

Even though a Finance Department circular dated November 1997 says all payments of purchases relating to the World Bank project must be made after being pre-checked by a special Finance Department team, all payments from June onward are being done directly from headquarters.

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Officials who handled the case stated that no payment has been made without receiving prior approval from the High Powered Committee headed by the secretary and the standing committee headed by the Director, Technical Education.

They further added that the payment of Rs 2.75 crore on vote on account basis was made as per the previous procedure.