Daily Times

KARACHI: Officials of the Sindh Education Department (SED) with the connivance of the Sindh accountant general (AG) office have successfully withdrawn at least Rs 200 million under the head of arrears on fake and bogus bills, Daily Times has learnt.

Sources said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), anti-corruption department; education secretary and the Sindh chief minister were informed about the withdrawal of such a huge amount on fake and bogus bills, however, action is yet to be taken.There are more than 247 fake bills which were cleared by the staff of Sindh AG with a total payment of Rs 200 million despite ban on claims of any type of arrears, sources said.

According to Sindh Accountant General Schools Directorate’s official correspondence, “Various correspondence letters with your office has been done since me taking over as director School Education, Karachi and I regret to state that despite all out efforts by the undersigned, the flow of irregularities in Accountant General Sindh has not stopped and billions of rupees are being misappropriated and embezzled.”

“It was reported and even discussed in many meetings that more than Rs 200 million got embezzled by the AG Sindh staff through fake and bogus bills. It is reported to this office that AG Sindh staff encouraged many fake persons of education and offered them to help to misappropriate government money with the share of 50 percent without fulfilling any formalities”, the documents said.

“Neither the bills were received nor were cleared without proper authorisation, verification, token number etc, the cheques were issued to fake persons with more than 50 percent paid as commission/bribe by the AG Sindh staff.

According to documents, the office has received some letters issued by POU to the DDOs with mysterious entries and astonishing fact and all misappropriation is done by the AG Sindh staff.”

The documents revealed that an employee of education department namely Imran M Khan got passed some 16 bills worth millions of rupees by the AG Sindh, while when the employee was interrogated by the then education director, he expressed his shock and said that he has not received a single penny.

The same situation occurred with the employee Muhammad Arsalan who got four bills cleared, M Dilawar Khan with six bills, Mohammad Riaz and Elahi Bux with two bills each, Shahid Ali with six bills, S Irtaza Sadiq Hasani with three bills, Muhammad Zeshan with four bills, Farzana Fayyaz with two bills, Manthar Ali with four bills, Miskeen Ali with four bills, Sajjan Khan with five bills, Abdul Rasheed with six bills, Rafiq Hussain with four bills, Shehzad Yousuf with six bills and others.

Daily Times has repeatedly sent text messages to education secretary Dr Fazalullah Pechuho, who is currently on training in the United States, however, his response is still awaited till filing of the story.