MULTAN, May 24: The Punjab Education Department has directed all boards of intermediate and secondary education to submit their demand for vehicles to be used for official duties.
The Punjab Boards Committee of Chairmen has sent a letter to all board chairmen in this regard directing them to convey their demand within two days.
Sources in the education department said in the meanwhile a senior official of the department had issued verbal orders that each of the chairmen should include at least two staff cars in the demand for vehicles.
Only the board chairmen can have a staff car, and at present all board chairmen have the same already in their use.
A senior employee of the Multan BISE apprehended that the bureaucracy in the Punjab Civil Secretariat would ultimately take away the new vehicles to Lahore on the expense of the boards.
Citing a previous example, he said a same kind of letter was issued in 1996, and the boards had purchased new cars which were later on transported to the provincial secretariat for the use of bureaucracy there.
He said the Multan board purchased two 1000cc cars on Aug 26, 1996. It had just got them registered when a fax message from the then deputy secretary (education), Hamid Saeed, was received that these vehicles be transported to the provincial capital.
He said both the vehicles had been in Lahore since Nov 14, 1996, while their maintenance and fuel expenses were still being afforded by the Multan board. He said recently the Punjab auditor general had objected to a payment of Rs835,055 by the board for the vehicles which were not in its use. The board has not so far answer this objection.
MAZAREEN: The Anjuman Mazareen-i-Punjab, Khanewal zone, has urged the authorities to shift its detained central secretary-general to hospital due to his deteriorating health.
AMP secretary-general Dr Christopher John was whisked away by some law-enforcement agents in Lahore along with three other Anjuman office-bearers on April 2. After detaining him at Lahore and Okara, the authorities transferred him to Khanewal last week.
He is in the lock-up of the Khanewal Saddar police station and his visitors told Dawn that his condition was not well.