ISLAMABAD: Despite a request from the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) board of directors, the government has so far failed to appoint a permanent chief executive officer (CEO) and a chief financial officer (CFO) for the state-owned entity.
According to sources privy to the matter, owing to the absence of regular officials at the PSM, the mill has witnessed a loss of around Rs48 billion in the last 13 months (from August 2018 till September 2019).
They said that the post of CEO has been lying vacant since April 2016, while the position of CFO has been vacant since January 2013.
“The estimated losses of PSM currently stand at Rs508 billion,” sources said. “Since the accounts of PSM were not audited from July 2015 till September 2019, the said figures are provisional/estimated losses.”
Sources found it strange that the PSM accounts remain unaudited and that there was no official clear figure available to determine the losses incurred by of PSM.
“PSM was deliberately destroyed by the successive governments from 2005 to 2018 and the present government has maintained the status quo by not initiating measures required to investigate the factors behind the losses,” sources maintained.
Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation (PSMC) Stakeholders Group recently wrote a letter to the Senate’s Standing Committee on Industries & Production chairman, urging him to order the initiation of an inquiry against those creating hurdles in the appointment of regular CEO and CFO.
“How many corruption cases were investigated by the Ministry of Industries and how many of them were forwarded to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)?” the PSMC Stakeholders Group had asked. “Who is responsible of the administrative and financial disaster of the mill?”
Taking to this scribe, PSMC Stakeholders Group Convener Mumrez Khan said the the MoI&P has so far appointed “blue-eyed officials” at the top positions and that these “favourite people were clueless about the functions of this important industry”. He said the performance of these officials was neither monitored nor evaluated by the appointing authority.
“We believe that those who damaged the state-owned entity should be investigated by Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) or NAB,” he said. “We are always available to assist the government for revival of the ailing PSM.”
Meanwhile, incumbent PSM chief and board chairman Aamir Mumtaz told this scribe that the government was hiring a regular CEO very soon and an advertisement in this regard would be published in the near future.
Sadly saying Govt ridiculous approach towards managing billions Rs worth industrial/business ventures like PSM is just like managing a typical govt department where even getting a birth certificate or say death certificate become an uphill task. Running industries/ businesses is the sole domain of private sector.The sooner govt understand this truth the better it is.