PESHAWAR: A major scandal has surfaced in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Finance Department, exposing 88 illegal recruitments of drivers, Naib Qasids and sanitary workers under fake position codes PR4041, PR8657 and PR8042. T
he irregularities, carried out between 2019 and 2024, have reportedly caused a loss of over Rs440 million to the state kitty.
Documents reveal that these recruitments were conducted in secrecy, without following legal procedures. No official advertisements were issued as required under the proposed recruitment procedure, and no recruitment committee was formed. The vacancies neither existed nor was any approval obtained from the relevant authorities.
According to sources, officials of the Finance Department and AG office were involved in these illegal recruitment. Basic employment documents such as service books and medical records of all 88 employees were missing. When the matter came to light, most of the employees were rapidly transferred to various departments, a fact verifiable from official records.
The Finance Department formally instructed the Accountant General’s (AG) Office via letter No. SOA/FD/1-19/2024 to suspend salaries. However, the AG Office reportedly did not comply, and the financial loss continued.
AG Office sources stated that normally salaries were not issued without proper documentation, and while inquiry orders were issued to determine responsibility, the office could not give a satisfactory explanation for why salaries were not stopped. Attempts to contact Khalid Mahmood, Accountant General KP, for clarification failed.
The Finance Department’s letter was dated 2024, but it was actually written in January 2025, apparently to create the impression that the AG Office had been informed a year earlier.
KP Chief Minister’s Finance Adviser Mazammil Aslam confirmed that an inquiry committee had been set up to identify those responsible. He said the Anti-Corruption Department will also take up the case.
He explained that there was a separate approved procedure for recruitment against the existing vacant posts and another procedure for creating new positions, but in this case, the rules were deliberately bypassed. He added that the Finance Department itself traced and detected the fraud.
