‘Board employees sabotaged results for money and revenge’

IT expert testifies before judicial commission, denies corruption.

LAHORE:

Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) employees sabotaged the intermediate exam results to make their boss and the new computerised system look bad, said Dr Majid Naeem, the former IT consultant for all eight BISEs in the Punjab.

A judicial commission consisting of Justice Shahid Saeed is conducting an inquiry into why there were so many errors in the results for the exams, which resulted in several protests and delays in the admissions process to colleges.

Dr Naeem told the commission on Tuesday that the board employees had two motives for the sabotage: money and revenge. He said that after the matriculation exams in 2009, BISE employees went on strike and refused to prepare the results. Then BISE chairman Akram Kashmiri had the employees detained under Section 16 of the Maintenance of Public Order Act, he said. The same man was reappointed chairman before this year’s inter exams. The board employees resentful of Kashmiri for having them arrested sabotaged the system so that he would get in trouble, Naeem said. Kashmiri was suspended after the inter exam results fiasco.

He said that board officials that were part of the ‘booty mafia’ – officials who alter results for money – were motivated by greed to make the computerised system look like a failure. The more computerisation is introduced into the system, the less opportunity for corrupt officials to alter scores, he said.

Naeem said he had sent written requests to the boards to continue to tabulate results manually as well as using the computerised system, but they had not done so. Another problem was that some boards used old software and not the software he had introduced.

He denied accusations made by board officials at previous commission hearings that he had been very difficult to work with. He said that he gave regular briefings to the board chairmen and their IT officials on his work. He said the chairmen did not know much about computers and he had tried to help them understand by translating computer terminology into simple terms.

He rejected the complaint that the new admissions form was too complicated, noting that he had reduced the admissions form from six pages to one. He said that when he was appointed IT consultant, he had moved forward with a system introduced by his predecessor, Yousaf Hamdani, and not introduced something entirely new.

Dr Naeem, who was produced in court by National Accountability Bureau officials, also denied using university funds for personal use while he was principal of the Punjab University College of Information Technology. He said he had helped design new admission forms in 2001 and the payment for them was sanctioned by the vice chancellor and not himself, as had been alleged.

He said he had resigned in protest from Government College University after three months because he felt the registrar was breaking admissions rules. He said he was hired for a three-month project at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) and completed his assignment. He said he had not been paid anything for the work he did for PU and UET.

Naeem said that the Punjab Boards Chairmen Committee (PBCC) had hired him as IT consultant on a four-month contract for Rs500,000. He said he had served for 16 months, but was paid only Rs220,000. Now, he said, the PBCC had hired Pakistan Telecommunications Limited for Rs15 million to do the same job.

He rejected accusations that he took commissions on equipment purchases, saying that he had nothing to do with purchases and these were the responsibility of the boards. He dared his accusers to present a single receipt he had signed. He said he had actually recommended the cancellation of various tenders because he felt they were purchasing computer devices that were not needed. He said the BISEs had collected some Rs200 million in fees from students and sought to conceal this from their accounts.

Lahore BISE Store Superintendent Tahir confirmed that Dr Naeem had recommended the cancellation of various tenders. He said that one recommendation made by Dr Naeem had gained the boards a better deal for the purchase of bar code readers than the deal finalised by BISE authorities. However, he said Dr Naeem had made purchases, though he had no proof. The judge told him to come again on Thursday, with proof.

Malik Nisar, a representative of the Multan BISE Employees Union, said that acts of corruption worth millions of rupees had been committed in the boards, but he had not documentary proof.

The commission will meet again on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2011.