FAISALABAD: A four-member committee of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company has detected an embezzlement of Rs92.8 million made through preparing fake bank scrolls and recommended action against 30 officials.

Action has also been recommended against the private audit firm which failed to detect the fraud although the Fesco administration has paid it more than Rs10m for annual audit.

The fraud was detected when the Civil Lines revenue officer on suspicion checked the record and found that a manual scroll of Rs1.3m dated Dec 26, 2015 was prepared by Muhammad Naeem, banking supervisor, against five consumers. Connections of such consumers were severed. Later, some of the consumers appeared in person and provided paid bills having bogus receipt stamps.

One of the consumers bearing reference No (09-13123-0442831) ‘confessed’ that the amount was collected by Hafiz Muhammad Aqeel, bill distributor (working with Naeem), and he provided a receipt of the paid amount.

The issue was reported to Fesco chief Rasheed Aslam who formed a committee, comprising Chief Commercial Officer Sardar Masood Iqbal, Convener Zahid Hasan, Chief Financial Officer Shafqat Rasul and additional chief (audit) Abdul Qayyum on March 3 last.

The committee was directed to scrutinise [fake] payments against consumer electricity bills by preparing bogus bank scrolls relating to Bank Al-Habib stubs for Rs1.3m against five consumers pointed out by the Civil Lines division EXEN.

First the committee was asked to probe the 2015 record; however, during proceedings the members detected fraud in previous years and its mandate was extended to January 2012.

Several meetings had been arranged for collecting the relevant record and recording statements of revenue office, computer centre, finance directorate and internal audit directorate employees.

The committee recorded the statements of 85 employees.

Action recommended against the officers included Naeem, Muhammad Aqeel, revenue officers Siddique Akbar, Waseem Asghar, Abdul Hafeez Nadeem, Iqbal Niazi, Irshad Husain and Munawar Husain (divisional accounts officer), Mureed Husain, Imtiaz Manzoor and Khalid bin Rasheed (accounts assistant), Akhtar Ali (ALM Khanuana subdivision), Muhammad Afzal Bari, Muhammad Afzal, Muhammad Maqbool, Abdul Rehman Fawad, (all of finance director office), employees of finance directorate and computer centre Malik Naseer Ali, Pervaiz Iqbal, Sajjad Habib, Imran Sultan, Muhammad Arif, Iftikhar Ahmad, Muhammad Aslam, Haq Nawaz Shahzad, Arshad Mehmood, ljaz Shaheen, Ashfaq Cheema, Mehboob Alam, Akhtar Saleem, Muhammad Boota, Hasnain Irfan Asim, Javed Iqbal, Hasnain Anjum, Shahid Ali,Rashid Hussain, Yousaf Khan, Ghulam Rasool, Sajid Naseer, Mumtaz Ali Amir, Naeem Khan, Mehmood Husain, Baqar Husain and Iftikhar Ahmad.

The committtee said action be taken against internal audit team members Muhammad Rafi, Zulfiqar Ali Kharal, Afzal Nadeem, Muhammad Farooq, Sadiq Ali Farooq, Saleem Raza, Kamran Asad and Asif Saharan who failed to unearth the scam.

The committee said: “Necessary explanation is also required from commercial auditors Ernst & Young, Ford Rhodes, Sidat Hyder Chartered Accountants as to why their teams could not detect the embezzlement.”

The committee also recommended steps to avoid such scams in future.

suspended: Faisalabad Electric Supply Company chief engineer (operation) has suspended four employees from service for working on electricity lines without taking safety measures.

The suspended officials are Line Foreman Ashiq Hussain, LM-II Muzamal Husain, Assistant Lineman Allah Ditta of Nia Lahore Sub-Division and LM-I Anwar Sohail of Samundari Road Sub-Division.

Chief Engineer Amil Siddique said the suspended employees were performing their duty on electricity wires without safety gadgets.

He said Fesco Chief Executive Officer Rasheed Aslam took a strict notice of the situation and ordered suspension of the employees.

Show cause notices had also been served to the sub-divisional officers (SDOs) concerned, he added.

Fesco chief said working on electricity lines without safety measures was tantamount to committing suicide and that life of line staff was precious for the department.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2016