KARACHI, May 27: Massive corruption and other irregularities have been reported in the finance department of the Sindh government with regard to grant of the house purchase advance to the provincial government employees.

The most common complaint is that the finance department officials demand 10 to 25 per cent commission for getting the advance sanctioned, according to the sources.

“Thousands of employees apply for the house purchase advance, and in order to extract maximum possible commission the corrupt elements get sanction orders issued in such a large number that surpasses the budgetary allocations, with the result that the accountant general Sindh has had to suspend payments on several occasions,” a source said.

The accountant general stopped twice all such payments in November-December 2002, and again in March this year, the source added.

The sources said that former provincial finance minister, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, tried to introduce a transparent procedure for grant of the house purchase advance. Before relinquishing the office last year, he held computer balloting for the purpose which benefited the maximum number of employees. But even then the finance department officials secretly issued sanction orders getting approvals ‘out of turn’ to receive huge commissions.

In the absence of any minister, till an advisor was appointed, the finance department officials were free to extract maximum commissions, an officer said adding that this was the period when the accountant general Sindh had stopped payments.

In March again the finance department issued a list of 216 employees who were granted house purchase advance, allegedly on the basis of commission and this time also the accountant general withheld payment.

An employee who had approached Mr Aftab Shaikh, then advisor to the chief minister on finance, told that the advisor asked him to wait till June because all the allocations for the current quarter had already been consumed. But contrary to that, a list of 974 employees was pasted on the outside wall of the advisor‘s office in April last, directing the ‘successful’ employees to collect their sanction orders from April 20.

Within few days another list, of one thousand ‘successful’ candidates’, was put on the notice board outside the advisor‘s office, directing to collect the sanction orders.

Another employee of the education department, Jacobabad district, said he had come to Karachi several times in the past one month for a house purchase advance, but the finance department officials, he alleged, were demanding 25 per cent commission.

“I approached provincial minister Mir Manzoor Panhwar and MNA Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani and got a recommendation letter, but I could not even enter the office block of the finance advisor,” he said.

The sources said the finance department officials even ignored some applications recommended by the chief minister because they knew that they would not earn any thing from such cases.

“Over Rs100 million have been disbursed among government employees as the house purchase advance in the last six months, and a similar amount would be disbursed in the near future,” a source said and added that the need was to keep a strict check on the corrupt elements that exploited poor employees.—PPI