Guwahati, March 28: Principal accountant general (audit) of Assam, Sword Vashum, today said the government departments have failed to submit the action-taken reports even after they were tabled in the House.

“The action-taken reports are required to be submitted within three months after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit reports are tabled in the House,” Vashum said today.

He complained that this trend is being noticed for the last few years and there has been no improvement in the situation. He expressed concern over the fact that the CAG reports are hardly read by the masses, even though they reveal the inefficiencies in the administration.

“Our function is to act as a watchdog and we do not tell the government on how to take action,” he added.

According to the instru-ctions issued by the finance department, all government departments are required to constitute the Audit Objection Committee for the expeditious disposal of audit observations contained in these inspection reports. These committees are chaired by a designated officer of the administrative department and attended by officers of the state government and the Principal Accountant General (Audit), Assam.

The 2006 CAG report for Assam said the audit committees should meet regularly and ensure that action is taken on all audit observations outstanding for more than a year. During 2005-06, only the transport department had convened meetings of the audit committee. “This indicates that other departments did not make effective use of the machinery created for expeditious settlement of outstanding audit observations,” he said.

The principal accountant general (audit), Assam, conducts periodical inspection of the state government departments to check transactions and verify the maintenance of important account records. The inspection reports are sent to the heads of offices and higher authorities.

Inspection reports issued upto December 2005 disclosed that 4,494 paragraphs relating to 1,495 inspection reports remained outstanding even at the end of June 2006.

The initial replies, which were to be received by the head of offices within six weeks from the date of issue, were not received in the case of 607 inspection reports issued between April 1994 and June 2006.