ISLAMABAD: An officer, without holding a relevant degree, has been appointed to the post of Social Welfare Officer at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). The administration of the PIMS has appointed a junior officer, Tariq Mehmood, on a BPS-17 post while a senior officer working in the same grade and having the requisite qualification will have to perform his duties under him. The Social Welfare Department of the PIMS has an annual budget of Rs 320 million per annum but such a person has been appointed on the slot of the in charge who was not only removed from his post on the corruption charges but was also sent to jail in the past on the charges of theft of medicines. But the management has closed its eyes from his track record and has appointed him on the lucrative post. The Social Welfare Office of the PIMS is the only department of the hospital where neither audit takes place nor is any record maintained about the financial assistance given to the deserving patients or how many commission were taken from the pharmaceutical firms that come to the hospital for collecting zakat on the pretext of distributing it to needy patients. When asked Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University VC Dr Javed Akram, he said that the previous Social Welfare Officer was removed from his post on the charges of corruption adding that Tariq Mehmood had been given a temporary charge. The PIMS administration has directed the social welfare institutions in black and white to provide a full time permanent officer.