International donors put forth three common demands to Pakistan before they started providing and pledging financial assistance for reconstruction and rehabilitation of areas devastated by the October 8 earthquake. These were an elaborate system of audit and verification of accounts, zero tolerance for corruption, and transparency. They have asked Pakistan to place reconstruction activities of the armed forces under the auditor general of Pakistan (AGP), and to put in place a corruption mitigation strategy for speedy transfer of foreign earthquake related donations by gaining international trust.
“We have asked the president and the prime minister to minimize fiduciary risks to gain maximum international trust for converting commitments of the $6.3 billion aid into a reality”, a country representative of a multilateral agency told Dawn. In this regard, the donors have emphasized that audit of the reconstruction activities of the military should be done by auditor general of Pakistan (AGP) as a regular budget audit instead of a military audit. The donors have informed the government that they would jointly keep a close watch on four fiduciary risks and then come out with a six-monthly monitoring report. These risks are related o funds set aside for procurement, the process of accounting and reporting, audit and parliamentary accountability. Two areas, particularly procurement and parliamentary accountability, were very weak in Pakistan, the donors believed.
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