ISLAMABAD, May 19: The Pakistan Post (PPO) has suspended payments against postal orders of the United Kingdom following massive losses it faced due to forged British Postal Orders (BPOs), sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

Officials said millions of rupees were drawn by some unscrupulous elements on forged BPOs in various parts of the country recently. The sources said the scam surfaced when British postal authorities refused to entertain PPO's claims for refund of the amount it had paid to a large number of BPO bearers.

The British postal authorities told their Pakistani counterparts that it had not issued such BPOs and hence could not entertain the fake claims. According to the sources, the fake BPOs were believed to have been prepared in the tribal areas of the NWFP where production of fake foreign currency notes has been a normal practice.

The procedure for the withdrawal of payments on BPOs make it incumbent on the holder to present a photocopy of his national identity card before the postal officials. Those who had withdrawn the money on fake orders had also followed the procedure.

However, according to officials, it was also believed that the holders of the fake orders had presented fake identity cards. Officials said the suspension of payments on the BPOs would create problems for the holders of the original BPOs as a large number of Pakistanis settled in the UK sent money through the BPOs.

The officials said the PPO had started investigation into the matter and the payments on the BPOs would not be reactivated without first detecting the culprits.