MIRPURKHAS: As an extensive investigation into the alleged sale of government jobs and extortion of millions of rupees using fake offer letters picked up momentum, a special team of the Mirpurkhas Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) carried out raids on the district health office and civil hospital on Tuesday and seized the relevant records.

The team headed by Mirpurkhas ACE assistant director Zawwar Hussain Unar told the media that the investigation was started following receipt of several hundred complaints regarding fake appointment letters and extortion.

As soon as the raiding team entered the district health office, all officers and other employees left it in panic while the District Health Officer (DHO), Dr Ghulam Hussain Kaimkhani, was already absent. The ACE team took the relevant record, kept in the accounts branch, in custody and rushed to the civil hospital to carry out another raid linked with the same case.

Sources said that the seized record pertained to 274 appointments finalised after written tests and medical examination of short-listed candidates.

In the raid on the civil hospital, the ACE team seized the fitness certificates issued to the successful candidates. However, they found four such certificates missing.

Mr Unnar told the media that the ACE was looking into the claim that all these appointments were made illegally by the DHO.

In an earlier development, the civil surgeon at the hospital, Shafqat Hussain Dahri, had cancelled the fitness certificates issued to the 250 of the 274 candidates declared successful for jobs in different cadres. The offer letters were issued by the DHO after they qualified in their written tests and interviews.

It was learnt that the entire process of recruitment was reversed on an order issued by the health secretary who cancelled 250 offer letters with the start of the ACE investigation.

A number of the affected candidates had staged a protest demonstration outside the district health office a couple of days back in protest against the cancellation of the offer letters without assigning any reason. They said they were appointed on a merit basis and had nothing to do with the corrupt practices resorted to by some unscrupulous elements in other cases.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2015

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