Job security: ‘Fake’ teachers in Sindh get paid Rs20m

By adjusting appointments to back dates, teachers able to draw salaries .

KARACHI:

The officials at the Sindh education department are canny enough that they could, in George Orwell's words, turn black into white.

In yet another scam designed to give legitimacy to over 9,500 allegedly fake teaching and non-teaching appointments during the tenure of former education minister Pir Mazharul Haq, the department officials have colluded with the Sindh accountant general's office to adjust the appointments to old dates, enabling the appointees to draw salaries and allowances amounting to an estimated Rs20 million.



Official documents and pay slips available with The Express Tribune reveal that the salaries and allowances were issued in the name of at least a couple of thousand personnel from among all 9,500, whose appointments were made through fraudulent means in the multi-billion corruption case and later announced to be revoked.

When The Express Tribune approached Sindh Education Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, he said that the department will take stern action against the culprits after collecting all available evidences. "We will obtain the complete details and payroll lists of the education department's actual employees in order to stop the issuance of salaries to the employees with fake identities," said Khuhro.

"Without the connivance of the office of provincial auditor general, the education department's deputy district officers and non-gazetted staff could not succeed to pick up from where they were made to leave off," said a senior official of the education department, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation.

He explained that the "recruitment mafia" had received a serious setback as they had to suspend the operations following the suspension of 12 key figures from their offices. "Since these officials had received hefty bribes from the poor candidates in issuing them thousands of [job] offer letters, they were under immense pressure by the candidates to settle the matter," he said. "The officials came up with a new way to exploit the loopholes in the system and managed new domiciles, national identification cards and permanent residence certificates, which establish that a majority of the appointees do not even belong to Karachi."

Last year in July, The Express Tribune had published a report in which the fake appointments in Karachi were confirmed by an inquiry committee formed by the education department's additional chief secretary, Dr Fazlullah Pechuho.

"The safest estimate is over 9,300 illegal appointments that can be confirmed through the record of Civil Surgeon Services Hospital, which had issued fitness certificates to the recipients of offer letters," stated the four-member committee's report, which was headed by the education department's special secretary, Shafiq Mahesar. "The fraud has happened at such a scale that the committee cannot even determine the exact number of illegal appointments."

The committee recommended initiation of criminal cases against at least 12 officials involved, including former Karachi education directors Shamsuddin Dal, Attaullah Bhutto and Qasim Baloch, with further inquiries to be carried out by the National Accountability Bureau. Meanwhile, all the Karachi-centric appointments were announced to be revoked by the department's additional chief secretary, Dr Pechuho.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2014.