PAC tells public sector universities to get degrees of their staffers verified by HEC

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Sindh Assembly has ordered all the public sector universities in the province to get the academic degrees of their teaching and non-teaching staff verified from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in one month.

The PAC, which met at the Sindh Assembly building on Monday, directed the public sector universities to terminate the services of their teaching and non-teaching staff whose academic qualifications could not be verified by the HEC. PAC Chairman Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, who chaired the meeting, said that there should be zero tolerance for instances of hiring by the public sector universities and other institutions in Sindh on the basis of fake academic qualifications. The committee issued these directives as it considered financial accounts of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Larkana. The Director-General Audit Sindh raised the objection that the Larkana-based medical university had carried out the recruitment process without verification of the academic qualifications of the selected candidates from the HEC.

The vice-chancellor (VC) of the medical university told the meeting that the MBBS and BDS degrees of the selected candidates had been verified by the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council before the recruitment process.

The VC informed the PAC members that the verification of the degrees of the university employees from the HEC was carried out by her university whenever there was any particular need. The PAC members were informed that one of the employees of the medical university had been fired from service whose academic qualifications could not be verified.