SANGHAR, April 9: At least 57 students of the Government Girls’ College, Sanghar, may lose an academic year as they have not yet received their enrolment cards from the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Hyderabad, it was learnt on Wednesday.

Sources said that the fees, deposited by these students well before the due date at the rate of Rs260 each, had been misappropriated by a clerk in the college’s accounts department, Zarya Khan.

Without enrolment cards, sources said, these students would be unable to fill their forms for the annual examinations, commencing from April 22.

They said that if the students were somehow allowed to apply for enrolment, they would have to pay a late fee amounting to Rs1,600 each in addition to a late fees for the examination forms.

The clerk, Zarya Khan, is reportedly absconding.

Interestingly, the same clerk had also misappropriated funds during his tenure at the Government Boys’ College in 1997-98. Students and their parents had to undergo an acute mental agony besides suffering financially.

An inquiry had been ordered against the said clerk and the inquiry officer had recommended the termination of his service. He had been served with the final show-cause notice, but with the change of the government in 1999, the inquiry was relegated to the proverbial cold storage and he was posted at the girls college.

Mir Hassan Sarewal, president of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association, Sanghar district, told this correspondent that an inquiry should also be made against those who were responsible for posting such a corrupt official at the girls college despite him having a very bad record.

The clerk, sources said, had claimed to be an “intelligence officer” and used to blackmail officials in the name of the military intelligence.