PAAAFR committee issues citations against 6,000 livestock farmers
KUWAIT CITY, Aug 7: Within one month, a committee formed by the Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR) issued citations against 6,000 livestock farmers who manipulated the fodder lists submitted to the authority in order to obtain undeserved support, reports Aljarida daily.
According to sources from PAAAFR, the committee formed under the chairmanship of the PAAAFR Director General Ali Al-Farsi came to a conclusion within one month that 6,000 out of a total of 20,000 livestock breeders had tampered with the fodder lists on the basis of which they were given support.
They affirmed that the fodder subsidy cards of the manipulators will be suspended, and the excess support would be transferred to the actual breeders.
The sources explained that the committee visited the breeders’ sites to ascertain the reality of the numbers of livestock registered in their files, including sheep, camels and cattle. These inspection tours aim at figuring out the actual breeders and the manipulators, especially after widespread sale of subsidized feed was observed on the black market at high prices by manipulators, who constitute 30 percent of the total number of breeders.
Al-Farsi intends to issue a decision to increase the support of the real breeders for animal feed of barley and others. The committee is communicating with the registered breeders to visit them on the field, and anyone who does not respond within 72 hours to its calls for a specific deadline to arrange the visit, their cards will be suspended.
It is noteworthy that the file of manipulations by livestock breeders has not been opened for many years, which resulted in major manipulations that affected the real breeders.
Meanwhile, Al-Rai daily reported that Al-Farsi issued several decisions over the past few days to correct the course in PAAAFR in order to avoid the regulatory authorities’ observations registered with the authority.
This comes in light of the government’s keenness to eliminate administrative and financial corruption in government agencies and the need for those bodies to adhere to the observations provided by the supervisory authorities such as the State Audit Bureau and the Civil Service Commission, and in line with the instructions of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmed AlNawaf.
In his first decision, Al-Farsi canceled all the decisions through which the supervisory positions were filled (assignment, appointment, transfer and promotion) from May 11, 2022 onwards, considering as though it had not happened and the consequent inadmissibility of the withdrawal of their decisions occupying them.
In the letter addressed to the head of Administrative and Financial Affairs Sector on August 1, the minister said this decision was based on Civil Service Council’s Resolution No. 8/2022.
Eng. Al-Farsi sent another letter to the head of Administrative and Financial Affairs Sector to provide him soon with the reasons that prevent linking the fingerprint attendance system with the CSC, as it can provide information on the attendance and departure of employees, and clarify the obstacles. He stressed the need for specifying the concerned authority in PAAAFR to hold it accountable, as per an observation raised by CSC, demanding to expedite the implementation of this order.
In another decision based on observations from the Financial Controllers Bureau about disbursing allowances and bonuses to employees unjustly and in contradiction with the regulating controls without obtaining the approvals of the concerned authorities, Eng. Al-Farsi instructed them to stop all these allowances immediately.
This decision was aimed to avoid the observations of the supervisory authorities, and instruct the concerned authorities to provide all administrative decisions issued to the CSC observers at the authority and the employment affairs observers to express their observations on them, adopt them and not issue any decision without the approval of the observers. This is due to the good progress of work and the authority’s lack of violations that are repeated annually.
Engr. Al-Farsi stressed the need to expedite the preparation of a report in response to the bureau’s observations in its report for the 2021/2022 fiscal year.