ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: Most of the directors of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) are unduly enjoying double financial privileges on account of conveyance, investigations by this scribe revealed.

The auditors and other agencies monitoring the working of the directorate seem to be unaware or are intentionally overlooking the violation of rules by the FDE directors.

According to rules, a government official can either draw car maintenance/conveyance allowance or use the official transport. But, all except one director and an assistant director of the FDE, are enjoying both the facilities simultaneously, the pay slips of these officers obtained from the AGPR office revealed.

The directors who are enjoying official transport facility as well as drawing conveyance allowance are: the director, administration, planning and development, (official vehicle No MA-4008); the director, schools, (ID-7105); the director, colleges, (IDB-2197); the director, coordination (IDB-2196); and the assistant-director (ID-964).

The chief coordinator, training, is being compensated for coming to the office on his personal car by a special monthly allowance of Rs3,000, as there was no vehicle that could have been offered to him, it has been learnt. Sometime back, he was being paid upto Rs5,000 per month.

Official sources claim that there is no provision under the rules for such an allocation.

Besides getting an undue financial advantage, the directors are also misusing the transport facility for their families. Some of the directors even send their trusted private secretaries in the official vehicle to pick and drop the children from schools. This practice of sending the secretaries instead of drivers is also reportedly affecting the official working.

As per rules, the official vehicles should be parked in the offices premises after the working hours.

However, almost all the vehicles under the use of the directors remain parked at their residences. The directors come to the office in these vehicles and then hand them over to the drivers in the morning. Interestingly, the children and other family members of the directors are also independently using these vehicles.

One such instance was reported to the director general of the FDE by an official driver. The driver informed the DG that he had seen an underage son of a director driving the official car. Instead of the director, the driver was suspended.

Moreover, it has been noticed that some of the directors do not even own cars and are drawing the motor car maintenance allowance.

One of the directors is even using two official vehicles, one is given to him by the FDE, while the other has been provided to him as a special favour by the principal of a college.

It has been further learnt that many principals are also following this precedent, set by the directors, and enjoying double benefits of keeping the official transport and drawing the motor car allowance.

A senior official of the ministry of education said the amount being drawn by these officials as motor car allowance might be negligible, but it reflected the mindset of these people.

Some of the directors, when contacted, maintained that they were unaware if they were violating any rules and added that finance people might be in a better position to judge. They denied misusing the official transport for personal purposes. — Zahra Syed