[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
President Mamnoon Hussain’s trip to Turkey cost only Rs127 millions, PAC report
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
It has become a tradition when politicians hold public office, they enjoy their free foreign tours, getting the protocol and plunders taxpayers public money.
But Pakistan’s current President Mamnoon Hussain has changed this perception by saving millions of rupees of the Pakistani citizens.
Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly Pakistan revealed that President Mamnoon Hussain has avoided the foreign trips and forestall a huge burden coming to the national exchequer.
President in the Fiscal year 2015-2016 spent only Rs 127.2 million out of the allocated budget of Rs270 million for the expenditure of his foreign visits and that too while undertaking only one visit to Turkey, according to a report.
The office of the Auditor General of Pakistan pointed out in the PAC meeting that the Foreign Office did not spend Rs143 million out of the allocated budget of Rs270 million for the president’s foreign visits.
The PAC held its meeting on Tuesday with the chair of Syed Naveed Qamar, who chaired the meeting in the absence of chairman PAC Syed Khursheed Shah.
The Committee members mocked President Mamnoon Hussain for a simple reason that head of the state did not have enough opportunities to visit abroad.
“In that year, the president visited only Turkey,” said Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua.
“The president never came down from the staircase of the presidency,” scorned Sheikh Rohail Asghar of the ruling party PML-N.
During the Committee meeting, when somebody said that the president often goes to perform Umrah, Sheikh Rohail again took a jibe and said that the president even performs Umrah here in the country.
On the other hand, the budget for prime minister’s foreign trips stood at Rs 2.2 billion, Rs23.2 million was saved by the prime minister office on foreign visits this past year due to a reduction in the size of the delegation that travelled with the premier, PAC statistics said.