RAWALPINDI, Jan 9: An amount of Rs1.8 million, donated by the Norwegian embassy for the municipal library, has allegedly been embezzled by the functionaries of the Rawalpindi District government, Dawn has learnt.

An investigation has been initiated in the matter. The Norwegian embassy, on some district government officials’ request, had promised to donate Rs1.8 million for renovation and improvement of Rawalpindi Municipal Library, devastated by the last year’s floods. Accordingly, a memorandum of understanding was signed between District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani and the embassy.

Later, the embassy sent the amount to the municipal library on December 12, 2001 through a draft, which was received by the library staff concerned on December 15. However, the staff, in connivance with some district government officials and contractor, Mr Allaudin, deposited the draft into the personal account of the latter at United Bank Limited, Chirah Road. Later, an amount of almost Rs300,000 was also drawn from the account in the first week of the current month. No official intimation of receipt of the donation was ever issued.

The central role in the whole scam, sources claimed, was played by Tariq Mehmood Khan, former PRO to Tehsil Nazim, and Babar Shahzad, a municipal library employee.

In the meantime, some higher authorities got air of the whole affair, and launched investigations into the incident. In addition to this, the district government officials are also being probed as to why did they approach the foreign mission for assistance, by-passing the prescribed procedure.

Meanwhile, the district government is busy covering up the issue to have a little face-saving before the diplomatic community, government and general public.

The sources told Dawn that some of the top minds of the district government, in a bid to hush up the affair, had weaved an excuse that the payment was directly made to Mr Allaudin for being a contractor of the embassy, and as such no embezzlement ever took place.

The excuse, they added, further contended that the issue had been created due to misunderstanding and over-ambitiousness of some of the authorities supervising the working of the district setup after the abolition of the formal army monitoring system.

Interestingly, when Dawn approached District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani for comments about the matter, he exactly gave the same explanation that according to the sources was planned for covering up the issue.