Finance Dept not giving approved loans to officials

By Noshad Ali

LAHORE: The Finance Department, due to a lack of funds, will not issue loans or advances to government employees that were pending from December 2003 to June 2004 and are payable by November 2005, Daily Times has learnt.

The Punjab government had given Rs 100 million in loans to around 2,000 government employees, but applications from around another 2,000 employees that have been approved will not be entertained.

The Finance Department intends to revamp the loan scheme for government employees by involving private commercial banks. The chief minister’s directives, issued prior to the 2004-05 budget, for sanctioned loans to be issued cannot be entertained, according to a notification issued by Deputy Secretary Muhammad Omar Masood, who is currently abroad for higher studies.

Punjab Accountant General (AG) Wazir Ahmed Qureshi told Daily Times that there was only Rs 1,000 allocated in this year’s budget for the loans, so pending applications worth around Rs 700 million could not be entertained.

He said he had suggested to the government that it stop issuing loans to employees because of the increased paperwork and general hassle it creates and instead tell employees to get loans from banks. He said the loan scheme was also open to abuse and corruption.

Mr Qureshi said he had objected to the sanctioning of loans worth Rs 100 million in the first two months of the last financial year for Civil Secretariat employees alone. Officials of all other government departments were not given loans, he said.

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