HYDERABAD: A BS-16 official was suspended for attempting to hoodwink the local government department and Hyderabad deputy commissioner through a fake letter to become administrator of 116 union committees and councils and operate their accounts.
The official, Mushtaq Ahmed Soomro, was suspended after Sindh Local Government Board (SLGB) found the letter appointing him as the administrator and another letter verifying his posting to be fake, according to the board’s secretary, Rashid Brohi.
Mr Brohi said that the letters were intercepted by the board in response to Hyderabad deputy commissioner’s communication regarding the official’s ‘posting’. An inquiry against Soomro was being ordered, he said.
The DC was given the charge of administrator for union committees and councils of Hyderabad by the LG department vide a letter dated Feb 3 and he assumed the charge on Feb 9. In the meantime, another letter dated Feb 28, purportedly issued by the LG secretary, surfaced and showed posting of Mushtaq Ahmed Soomro as the administrator for all these 116 UCs.
Soomro did not approach the DC to take the charge. Instead, he went directly to some banks for his biometric verification that could enable him to operate the UCs’ accounts. His act alerted the DC who, on March 14, sought verification of the February 28 letter from the SLGB secretary.
Interestingly, the February 28 letter was also purportedly verified on March 16 by the SLGB secretary in response to the DC’s letter.
In his March 14 letter, the DC citing relevant records revealed that UCs’ funds had been withdrawn between Feb 2 and 28 by successive administrators in haste and the amount withdrawn was not spent on cleanliness or any other development work in the respective UCs. He also noted that in UC-46, an amount of Rs5m was withdrawn in a single day.
The DC informed the SLGB secretary about his direction to the UC-46 secretary to produce documents of fund utilisation but he failed to do so. Such blatant misuse of public money warranted an in-depth investigation on the part of the LG secretary and anticorruption department, the DC suggested.
Eventually, UC-46 secretary Riaz Hussain Rahujo was suspended by the SLGB.
He was holding the additional charge of UC-22 and 30 of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) and UC-25 Dad Jarwar, district Tando Allahyar.
The DC, in his letter, had also complained that the new administrator had started working without intimation to him which was against the official protocols.
He said that frequent transfers and postings of administrators for UCs had paved the way for malpractices and irregularities and dealt a severe blow to development works that could, otherwise, have been carried out with UCs’ funds. He had proposed that development works carried out by administrators should be monitored and counter-checked through a joint mechanism.
According to sources, Mushtaq Soomro got the posting order by using a political connection. Rahujo also got posting through a similar political connection, they said.
Rahujo, was suspended for alleged embezzlement or misappropriation of funds through fake bills or flying vouchers after DC’s letter, the SLGB secretary’s letter stated.
Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2022
