Audit ordered into Lahore Waste Management Company fuel and repair spending

The Auditor General of Pakistan will carry out a special audit of the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) covering fuel consumption, vehicle mileage and expenditure on machinery repairs and maintenance, after a Punjab Chief Minister's inspection team reported serious gaps in the company's fleet management and record-keeping.

According to TechJuice, the Local Government and Community Department asked for an audit team to be deployed at the earliest in a letter dated October 20, signed by Section Officer (Companies) Muhammad Aslam Nadeem. The request followed a report by the Chief Minister Inspection Team (CMIT) recommending the audit, which the chief minister directed the administrative department to act on.

The CMIT inspected the Suthra Punjab Programme in Lahore on September 8 and 9. Its chairman, Salman Ijaz, signed the report on October 2. It was endorsed by Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister Sajid Zafar Dall on October 9 and by Chief Secretary Zahid Akhtar Zaman on October 11, TechJuice reported.

At the LWMC control room, the team checked live locations of compactors, loader rickshaws, containers and mechanical sweepers through the vehicle tracking system. Vehicles that had been parked at workshops for repairs for about 15 days appeared as "non-reporting" in the tracking system for roughly two months, and the difference could not be explained during the inspection. The team called for the two sets of records to be reconciled.

The inspection also covered the Outfall Road and Thokar parking yards and workshops, where some vehicles had been nonfunctional for months. The LWMC Deputy Chief Executive Officer told the team that the company carries out its own repairs and maintenance, and that most of the unserviceable vehicles had been handed over in 2021 by the predecessor contractor Al-Burak, which had removed their Electronic Control Modules and left them unusable.

Officials told the team that 291 vehicles have been proposed for auction. The process had been held up by litigation involving international contractors, which has recently been decided. The report recommends expediting disposal of the condemned vehicles.

The team found that engine oil changes, repairs and maintenance were recorded manually, with no computerised system to monitor them. It recommended installing a centralised Vehicle Maintenance Management System to keep vehicle-specific records of servicing, spare parts and costs, and asked the Suthra Punjab Authority to set up an effective monitoring mechanism to check possible fuel pilferage. Staff attendance was checked through the Lean Punjab Monitoring App, TechJuice reported.