Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Decentralising the hiring residences of the employees to colleges/schools has resulted in several issues including corruption in the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), Daily Times has learnt reliably.

Through an official notification in November 2015, a copy of which is with Daily Times, the FDE has decided to shift the hiring matters to the educational intuitions functioning under its supervision. There are 422 educational institutions including 20 model institutions.

“All the heads/ AEOs shall furnish the cases of fresh hiring to the FDE for assessment of the rent of the residential building and approval of the lease agreement as per rules”, reads the notification.

It further states that the budget section shall allocate/appropriate the funds to the educational institutions (for this purpose).

An official in the FDE, wishing not to be named, said that this measure of the authorities concerned had resulted in several issues including corruption and blackmailing. The female staff, especially in the educational institutions, had become victims of blackmailing.

He quoted such a case which had emerged recently at Islamabad Model School for Girls (IMSG) Kot Hathial, wherein an official of the school Ejaz Mehmood, was found involved in corruption of around Rs 11 lakhs.

The documents available also reveal that Mehmood, who was dealing with the accounts matters in the school, used to make money trough fake signatures on the files of Nighat Munawar (TGT), Aneesa Javed (TGT), Asima Bibi (TGT), Shazia Hussain (TGT), Gul Nisa (MTT).

He, under the fake signatures of the faculty, proceeded their cases to the Accountant General Pakistan Revenues (AGPR), for hiring the residences and withdrawing the amount. The original files which should be submitted for house hiring, were not submitted to the AGPR. Interestingly, Gul Nisa even did not apply for the hiring of a house.

An inquiry held in the FDE to probe the case found Mahmood guilty. After which the case handed was over to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for further investigation in this regard.

Inspector FIA, Qamar Abbas, confirmed to this correspondent that Mehmood confessed to the crime before the investigating team and gave a written affidavit for this, adding that he had been put behind the bar for a judicial remand.

The official in the FDE said that this was not a single case as there are many other examples in this regard. He claimed as there was no checking body over this (hiring of the residences), the officials in the schools/colleges used to get the hiring amount for the house/home which had not even been constructed, or which did not fulfil the prescribed criteria of hiring.

Another official said on the condition of anonymity that on a complaint, the FDE senior/authorised officials investigated a residence hiring case in Taronol sector. “They (investigators) got surprised when they found that there was no house that was being described in the papers as hired residence”, he added.

Earlier this, as per documents, the Estate Office Islamabad, was the responsible body to facilitate house hiring to the officials working in all the federal government departments. The government, through an order in 2004, transferred this responsibility to the departments that they will deal with the hiring cases internally, without intervention of the Estate Office.

In following this, the FDE has established an Estate Wing in the department to deal with house hiring cases of the officials serving in its all educational institutions. But it got further decentralised to schools and colleges.