Schools directed to get pending audits cleared before June 21

The office of the director of school education has released a list of schools with huge pendency of inspection reports and paragraphs of accountant general (audit) Punjab and instructed all the school heads, district education officers (DEOs) and block primary education officers (BPEOs) to get outstanding inspection pending reports cleared before June 21 by the accountant general, audit Punjab Chandigarh.

However, school heads claim that most of the schools have already got their paras cleared and are being harassed due to the department being dysfunctional at higher levels. A principal of one of the government senior secondary schools, on the condition of anonymity, said, “The paras mentioned against the schools date years back when the school head was someone else and almost the entire staff has been changed so far. A few of them got retired, transferred or moved abroad. A few of the schools are unable to find the record for those years and the rest have already submitted the final report but have not received clearance from the concerned department for unknown reasons.”

The list of outstanding inspection reports has been released in which 133 schools of the district have been mentioned along with the period of local audit report (LAR) and the title of paras required to be cleared by the department. The paras include non-utilisation of grants, excess payment and inadmissible drawl of mobile allowances, improper maintenance of cash book and general provident fund register, non-deposit of share of sports fund to DEO among others. Beside schools, DEOs (secondary and primary) and BPEOs have also been instructed to get the reports cleared.

Another school head, who visited the office of accountant general a day back said, “LAR for my school is from 2007-16 and out of the three components mentioned in the paras, we do not have record for one of the components, so I have demanded an annexure through which we can try getting these components cleared.”

School heads also mentioned that the department should organise camps for each block where the schools can get all their components cleared in the presence of an audit team, with no scope of miscommunication this way.

DEO (secondary) Harjinder Singh remarked, “We understand that it is not an easy task for the schools as the period of LAR dates way back but we have been asking schools to get the clearance reports for nearly four months now, which is why a notice has been released to do the needful on immediate basis.”