AAJ TV : Pakistan Ki Awaz

ISLAMABAD : The Economic Advisory Committee (EAC) has taken serious notice of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's extravagance, and directed the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to charge bill of two chartered flights of PIA from him which he used for foreign visits.

In its meeting held here last week, EAC had noted that Mahmood Qureshi had travelled to India and United Kingdom (UK) on chartered flights of PIA for official visits, which he was not authorised. These two chartered flights cost roughly $120,000 to the national exchequer in terms of charges paid to the Civil Aviation Authorities of the two countries visited by him, besides payment made to holding the plane in waiting for a couple of days each time.

This amount does not include the loss that PIA bore for sparing its two planes for the Foreign Minister's two days stay in India and again for UK. The PIA management hardly calculates the loss it incurs for providing its planes for such extravaganzas. What it does proudly is to keep updating the government from time to time on its increasing financial losses.

The EAC was of the view that as per rules, the Prime Minister is the only authority who can use chartered flights for foreign visits, but it is not the jurisdiction of other ministers who, of course, include the Foreign Minister.

The EAC also noted that the Foreign Minister's two foreign visits on chartered flights were waste of public money and it can not be ignored. It directed the MoF to send bills of both chattered flights to Shah Mahmood Qureshi with the direction that he should make payment from his pocket.

One of EAC members told this correspondent on Tuesday that the committee turned down MoF view that Foreign Minister's visits to India and UK were of urgent nature and directed the authorities who were present at the meeting to implement the directions.

The committee members were of the view that the Foreign Minister could fly by commercial flights of PIA to travel to India and UK. The member said: "Pakistan is in severe financial crisis that demands saving at every level. But unfortunately the Foreign Minister was travelling for official visits on chartered flights of PIA for which he was not authorised. The committee wants to make it a test case and wants to make sure that the ministers or any other authority in the government does not spend public money on the ministers' trips to different countries".

Copyright Business Recorder, 2008