Senate body unveils Rs10b fraudulent nephrite mining in Fata

PESHAWAR: The Senate Standing Committee on States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) has decided to hand over evidence of fraudulent nephrite mining in Mohmand Agency incurring a loss of Rs10 billion to the national exchequer to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

The committee also took note of the low utilisation of development funds in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and asked the additional chief secretary (ACS) Fata to ensure spending of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) funds to avoid lapse of Rs19 billion ADP allocations for the tribal areas.

Chaired by Senator Hilal-ur-Rehman, the committee met to look into the issues around the tendering and mining of nephrite and other minerals and the utilitisation of the ADP funds in the Fata.

The meeting was also attended by its members including Senators Muhammad Saleh Shah, Taj Muhammad Afridi, Hidayat Ullah, Malik Najmul Hassan, Ahmed Hassan, Khanzada Khan and Sitara Ayaz.

According to the minutes of the meeting shared with The News on Friday, the meeting was held on February 9 in Islamabad.

After taking up a heavy agenda, the committee of the Upper House of the Parliament on SAFRON directed that tendering process on development schemes under “Special Initiatives in Fata Phase-II” ADP and “Fata Infrastructure Development Package” should be undertaken by adopting all necessary codal formalities. It also directed that detailed progress be shared with the committee by ACS Fata on the next sitting of Standing Committee.

It said that the site identification for the pending development projects should be completed by the respective political agents (PAs) and assistant political agents (APAs) on priorities basis.

The committee also asked the Fata Secretariat that, “in order to avoid lapse of Rs19 billion from Fata ADP of 26.5 billion for 2017-18, ACS should ensure full utilisation against releases from Finance Division by the end of third quarter March 31.” The committee concluded that both the prospecting and subsequent mining licences for nephrite were evidently awarded fraudulently to a firm without observing adherence to Mining Concessional Rules 2005.

It said that a departmental inquiry should be initiated as per E&D Rules against all the concerned officers of Mineral Directorate, especially the incumbent director minerals who had issued the initial prospecting license on May 13, 2014 in favour of M/S Bajaur Ancient Variety Pvt Ltd, Fata Development Authority (FDA) and political administration Mohmand Agency.

The Senate body informed that from January to August 2015, nephrite was mined illegally on prospecting license and the actual number of trucks exited for nephrite out of Mohmand Agency was 32.

The committee said it had record of the same, which it would hand over to the NAB and FIA to probe the matter and estimate the actual scale of the loss to the national exchequer. However, it said it was roughly around Rs10 billion in the open market.

The standing committee unanimously recommended that all losses incurred to the state exchequer in lieu of the fraudulent mining operations must be recovered through the NAB. It directed the Ministry of SAFRON to send the case to the NAB.

The committee also sought disciplinary action against deputy secretary of the SAFRON Nadeem Ashraf, chairman of the inquiry committee investigating the matter of fraudulent nephrite mining, for his non-cooperation with the committee.

It also directed the Fata Secretariat to immediately repatriate services of Nadeem Ashraf to his parent department, ie education.