THATTA: The Sindh chapter of the Natio­nal Accountability Bureau (NAB) has succeeded in recovering over Rs40.7 million of the embezzled money from education department employees under the voluntary return (VR) offer, official sources told Dawn on Thursday.

While an inquiry into the scam is under way, NAB has referred the matter of departmental action against the employees to the special education secretary (law).

A larger amount of funds for the department had been transferred directly to the personal accounts of education employees under the head of “arrears” during the year 2014-15 by treasury offices of various districts.

The employees included teachers, officers and clerks posted at education offices in Thatta, Sujawal, Dadu and Jamshoro districts. No official document was found for the disbursement when NAB conducted an inquiry into the dubious payments. Most of the recipients of the “arrears” were placed under suspension during the inquiry.

Suspended education employees pay back amounts under ‘voluntary return’ offer to escape action

Fearing a harsher action, the recipients started paying back their respective amounts under the voluntary return offer.

The local NAB officials confirmed that the amount thus recovered from them had come up to Rs40.7m as of Thursday.

Hearing of the individual cases is under way in the office of the special education secretary, according to the NAB officials.

It is learnt that the investigators are also looking for some other unscrupulous elements involved in making the “arrangement” between the recipients and the treasury offices’ staff.

They believed that such agents must have minted commission from the beneficiaries of disbursement of the “arrears”.

The racket was unearthed after Niaz Ahmed Shah, a teacher posted at the Govt High School, Khizarabad, in Sujawal district, approached the treasury officials concerned and produced his bank statement showing an amount of Rs111,996 having been credited to his account.

He informed them that six other teachers of the same school had also received the same amount.

Eventually, an inquiry into the racket was conducted secretly, officials in the education and police departments said.

The probe revealed that a treasury official, in connivance with some unscrupulous elements within the education department, transferred the money to “several hundred employees” against a 50 per cent commission charged from the recipients.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2019