FAISALABAD, Aug 1: The District Accounts Office has detected a Rs5.3 million scam in which education, police, health and irrigation officials are involved.

According to a DAO source, the amount was withdrawn by the employees of these provincial departments under the head of salaries without their entitlement.

According to him, of the total amount, Rs3.9 million had been withdrawn by the employees of the education, around Rs1 million by the police, Rs125,000 by the health and Rs105,000 by the irrigation department.

He said on the directives of the Accountant General, Punjab, a special team had been assigned to monitor, review and refix salaries of provincial government department employees according to their entitlement and instructions issued by the finance department which detected the fraud.

He said hundreds of employees were reluctant to give information, their service books and other documents pertaining to fixation of their pay fearing legal proceedings.

Meanwhile, the AG ordered the DAO to stop payment of all those government employees who were not cooperating for the checking of fixation of their wages.

Refixing and checking of about 21,000 government employees have so far been completed while the scrutiny of record of other employees was in progress, he said.