Scammed out of savings

Walk into any of the National Savings Centre’s 376 branches across the country and you will immediately notice one striking similarity: most of those lining up at the counters or awaiting their turn were usually retired or near-retirement.

Owing to a lack of comprehensive post-retirement financial support system, middle-income people in the country, especially those working in the private sector, have few avenues available which would provide them with decent returns over time. The National Savings Certificate schemes are one of those programmes with a relatively stable stream of return. To learn that this institution, which helps shore up the economy with as much as Rs3.6 trillion in savings, has uncovered a group of employees who have syphoned off large amounts of money, comes as a shock.

Reports suggest that a group of employees in a Lahore branch of the national saving scheme were found to have created discrepancies between the computerised and physical records of certificates and were diverting the difference into the accounts of their family members. Investigations revealed that the scam affected different savings schemes and instruments and that the officials involved had syphoned off as much as Rs200 million. Investigations further showed that such records could only be tampered by individuals who had direct access to the national savings database.

Moreover, circumstances conducive for the scam arose when an officer of basic pay scale grade 14 was handed charge of a BPS-17 post at the Lahore branch. This was exploited by his seniors resulting in a punitive action for at least one BPS-18 officer, two in BPS-17 and two others in BPS-11. While the authorities have thus far recovered around Rs90.43 million of the syphoned money and the national savings directorate has embarked on a plan to automate its branches, none of this would have happened if the officials involved just did their jobs.

More rigorous checks and balances are needed so that millions of elderly do not lose their life savings.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2018.

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