PESHAWAR:The Auditor General of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) identified PKR 160 million worth irregularities in the purchase of books by the provincial Archives and Libraries department.
“Public treasury had to suffer a loss of more than PKR 16 crore for repurchasing unnecessary and already purchased books for public libraries,” the  report said. The books were purchased under the annual development program. The audit report said that the Archives and Libraries department does not have a record of demand of citizens and students or recommendation of researchers, and universities available for the purchase of these books.
The Auditor General report said that it was stated that PKR73 million books have been purchased in 2014-15, PKR15 million during 2015-16, PKR 8.30 million during 2016-17, PKR5.6 million in 2017-18, PKR 5.6 million during the year 2018-19, PKR18 million during the year 2019-20 books and  PKR 40 million books were purchased in 2020-21. A total of PKR 160 million books were purchased during six years.
Irregularities have been identified in the purchase of these books and it was stated that students, universities or researchers were not consulted before the purchase of these books. Several books were also purchased earlier and were already available in Public libraries.
The Auditor General also raised an objection that there is neither any record of the purchase committee allowing the purchase of these books nor there is record of the rates of book sellers and the process of book purchase available with departmen. According to the report, the Department of Archives and Libraries did not even try to take these books on discounted rates.
The Auditor General’s report said that the price of the books has not been verified, while the originality of the purchased books (i.e. they belong to the original publisher) has also not been verified by the department.
