NAB officers ignore degree verification deadline

ISLAMABAD: Many officers of National Accountability Bureau (NAB), despite repeated reminders to submit their degrees with the NAB headquarters for verification have not done so yet.

A circular issued late August 2015 (copy available with The News) warned NAB employees to immediately submit their educational documents for verification from the Higher Education Commission. The letter, issued on August 25, 2015, says: “A drive in this regard was launched some time back however the response has not been satisfactory. Several officers have not provided their documents till yet. This may be treated as a last warning to provide documents to Addl Director (PM) for officers posted at NAB HQ and Additional Director (Staff) for officers posted at regions for further dispatch to HEC. All officers of NAB are given 07 days to either get the degree verified from HEC or provide the requisite documents as mentioned in the list enclosed otherwise it will be presumed that the degrees are unverified, and will be proceeded as such”.
Well-placed sources in NAB told The News that some 70 NAB officers have not provided their educational documents to the bureau for verification. Among them five are posted as directors.
Last year in June, in one of the first instances of documented corruption and fraud, NAB found one of its senior officers with fake degrees and the chairman NAB dismissed him from service. NAB dismissed the services of one of its senior Acting Additional Directors Muhammad Hanif Mahesar, Acting Additional Director NAB (Sindh) with immediate effect after Shah Abdul Latif University (SALU), Khairpur declared his Master’s in Economics degree as fake and bogus.
The current fake degree campaign started when PML-N leader Abid Sher Ali, chairman National Assembly’s standing committee on education announced to get the degrees of all parliamentarians verified, which resulted in the ouster of at least 50 MPs. Many cases of fake degrees against parliamentarians are still pending in courts while pressure mounted on the government institutions and departments to get the degrees of their employees verified from the Higher Education Commission and the relevant universities.