Nine officials refuse to return inflated salaries

LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday informed the Supreme Court that 45 officials of Punjab’s public sector companies have shown willingness to return inflated salaries they had received.

“Nine officials have, however, refused to return the excess amount,” NAB Director General (Lahore) Shahzad Saleem informed the apex court on Friday. He submitted a report before a two-judge bench of the apex court hearing a suo motu case related to higher salaries received by heads of companies.

The director general said: “Forty five (45) officials have agreed to return the excess amount, while nine are unwilling to do so,” adding the anti-graft watchdog has received over Rs320 million from officials who received inflated salaries.



He said three out of the nine officers were in NAB’s custody for probe into cases of alleged corruption. These include Ahad Khan Cheema, Fawad Hasan Fawad and Waseem Ajmal.  Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar, who headed the bench, directed the remaining public officials to return the inflated salaries within three months.

He warned that action would be taken against them in case of non-compliance of court orders.

The Safe City Project Lahore Managing Director Ali Amir Mali and Chief Operating Officer SSP Akbar Nasir were also present in the court. The officers contended that they were paid under the law as per the nature of their job responsibilities the authority.

Justice Nisar questioned Ali Amir as to why he had been receiving Rs650,000 when he should have got Rs150,000-200,000 as per his pay scale. Malik was one of the nine officials who refused to return the excessive salaries.

When asked by the court, they said their regular salary was around Rs100,000 or so before appointment in the authority. The chief justice said he would order registration of a case against the whole authority.

The CJP told the officers that they looted the public money by getting salaries six times more than their regular salaries. He observed that all these appointments in the public sector companies were made in a mala fide manner. The hearing was adjourned for indefinite period.