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The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) arrested three secondary school teachers for their involvement in taking bribes and making fake appointments based on fake degrees in the Punjab Education Department. Some influential political figures have made efforts to obtain the release of arrested teachers, but have failed due to ACE’s investigation into this issue.

The Provincial Inspection Team (PIT) detected embezzled amount of Rs19.4 million from just 24 Iqra Farogh-e-Taleem Voucher Scheme (IFTVS) schools in Mansehra instead of the 89 schools registered by the KP government. The Provincial Bureau of Statistics (BOS) survey identified 23,071 out of schoolchildren for their enrolment in district Mansehra. However, the PIT inquiry found, “the data collected by BOS was erroneous as per 100% validation by district programme officer only 4,183 students were physically available, whereas the PIT also found a huge variation in the data.”

Sindh Anti-Corruption Establishment has found corruption and misuse of authority in Sindh Education Department district Jacobabad involving illegal inducting of hundreds of fake teachers, getting illegal financial benefits in the name of fake employees’ retirement, pension and death claims from department and life insurance company. The investigation continues after the fraud of millions of rupees has been reported, as well as the illegal role and abuse of authority from officers of the Education and Finance Departments.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) will meet next week to decide the fate of its second most important officer whose research paper was found to be 88 percent plagiarized. The Chairman had set up a committee to probe the allegations of plagiarism against the commission’s Executive Director (ED). Sources said after the issue came to the light through a news story published in this paper, the committee formed by the HEC Chairman held a meeting this week to review the Executive Director’s research paper which was found plagiarized.

Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission this month issued a public notice listing 153 illegal universities and degree-awarding institutions. A large number of illegal universities mentioned in the HEC notice do not exist, some are run from apartments and commercial buildings and issue degrees not recognised by higher education authorities of the federal or provincial governments. Academics say, however, the rising trend of fake universities cannot be discouraged without punitive action against the management of the bogus institutions.

The Sindh Chief Minister told the Sindh assembly that they are taking steps to improve the education sector with emphasis to make exam result system free from corruption. He was responding to a call attention notice of a Pakistan lawmaker who asked why no action was taken by the government after the anti-corruption department raided the education boards in Karachi due to accusation of result tempering and embezzlement of public money.

During a meeting of Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) at the Chief Minister's House on Thursday, the Sindh Chief Minister stated that the Sindh government is working hard to enhance the literacy ratio in the country as it is the only tool which can get rid of prevalent corruption in the society. Briefing the meeting, the ACE Chairman said that from January to March 31, his team made 22 surprise visits, conducted 41 raids, made nine traps and registered and arrested 82 government officials.

Three more cases of unlawful appointments in the Rawalpindi education department have been unearthed. According to sources in the education department, three fake women teachers have been hired for a high school for boys. The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) is already investigating the appointment of 50 fake teachers in the education department in Kallar Syedan. The Executive District Officer has launched an inquiry into the bogus appointments, an official in the education department on condition of anonymity said.