By Farid Sabri
The Capital Development Authority (CDA) withheld the monthly salary of 200 officers of BPS-16 to BPS-20 for the month of November who failed to get their degrees verified from the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
1124 officers of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) were asked to submit their degrees for verification around 21 times in the last three years.
Due to sheer disdain of the officials concerned the process of degree verification lingered on.
A couple of months ago, Chairman Maroof Afzal suspended 4 CDA officials after their degrees turned out to be counterfeit. Since then, other officials have been reluctant to submit their degrees for verification.
“These people have spent 20, 25 years in the CDA. During this time they’ve earned millions, got themselves plots in posh sectors and have approved projects worth billions. Will the Mayor be able to recover even a fraction of what they’ve looted?” asked an official of the Human Resource Department (HRD).
Those with counterfeit degrees will be suspended, and their cases will be forwarded to the Human Resource Department for further processing, according to the HRD source.
According to documents available with Pakistan Today,117 officers of grade BPS-16, 171 officers of BPS-17, 103 officers of BPS-18, 26 officers of BPS-19 and an officer of BPS-20 were marked by the Degree Verification Section back in October, however 231 of them have submitted their graduate and post graduate degrees to the DVC.
Many officers submitted their attested degree or the HEC token for degree verification after realising that the CDA is going to block their salaries.
The degree verification of 200 officers is still pending.
The Degree Verification Section (DVC) has allocated the special budget of 7 million rupees for the degree verification process. Yet the DVC directed the CDA officials to have their degrees and certificates attested and verified at their own expense and time.
The Public Relation Officer for CDA Mazhar Hussain confirmed that a summary has been sent to Member Administration and the salaries have been withheld till the officers get their degrees verified.
“We’ve been issuing notices to the officers for past many years. Now we had no other option but to freeze their salaries. Their salaries will be blocked till they verify their degrees’.
