The Capital Development Authority (CDA) top brass officers have been tight-lipped after the Higher Education Commission (HEC) instructed the civic agency to submit their employees’ degrees for cross verifications about a month ago. Following the fake degrees episode inside CDA, the top management has already suspended the services of many employees having fake degrees but this time the civic agency adopted silence after the prediction that some high rank officers’ degrees were fake. The degrees’ verification file is still hanging with the head of the department. It is pertinent to mention that after a heated debate inside various ministries, departments and airlines, CDA requested HEC to verify the degrees of their employees. In response, HEC instructed the civic agency to submit their employees’ degrees for cross verification which were already attested by linked boards and universities. According to sources, after the country’s premier airlines, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) recent scam of fake degrees of their pilots and crew staff, a couple of other departments and institutions started scrutiny of their employees’ degrees. A source in CDA told that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is also monitoring the issue of fake degrees and the case of two top brass officers has already been forwarded to the investigative agency for monitoring. He added that there is no mechanism of checking degrees during recruitment period because even in the civic agency, some of the engineers’ degrees have been found fake which is embarrassing for CDA. CDA Board Secretary Imaaduddin Muhammad is handling the case of fake degrees of the employees. He remained unavailable for comment despite repeated attempts to contact him. Published in Daily Times, January 19th 2019.