SMBBMU spent $129,600 on the three, PAC told, as a nursing lecturer’s degree is found fake
KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has been revealed that three of the seven doctors whom Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University (SMBBMU) Larkana sent abroad in 2016 for four-year PhD programmes in the United Kingdom, China, Germany and other countries, under a Higher Education Commission (HEC) scholarship, have still not returned. The university spent $129,600 on the three over four years and has so far only filed a petition in court to recover the amount.
The PAC directed the SMBBMU administration to write to the immigration authorities and the relevant embassies about the three doctors, who have stayed away despite completing their PhDs. The meeting was also informed that a nursing lecturer’s BS Nursing degree had turned out to be fake during degree verification at the university.
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The meeting was held in the committee room on Tuesday with Nisar Khuhro in the chair. SMBBMU Vice Chancellor Dr Nusrat Shah, officers of the Sindh Higher Education Commission and other officials concerned attended.
The committee reviewed SMBBMU’s audit paras for 2022 and 2023. Audit had objected that no action was taken against the doctors who failed to return after completing their scholarship-funded PhDs, causing a loss of millions of rupees to the national exchequer.
PAC Chairman Nisar Khuhro asked how many doctors had been sent abroad, to which countries, how many had not come back and how much had been spent on them.
Dr Nusrat Shah told the committee that seven SMBBMU doctors were shortlisted under the HEC’s PSDP scholarship programme and sent in 2016 for four-year PhDs in Germany, the United Kingdom, China and other countries. Three of them, Dr Shah Alam Solangi (China), Dr Zafar Ali Abro (Germany) and Dr Benazir Abbasi (London/Ireland), have not returned even though their four-year programmes are over.
University Director Finance Muhammad Rafiq Sarki said $1,200 a month was spent on each doctor. For the three who did not return, that came to $3,600 a month and $43,200 a year, or $129,600 over four years.
Asked what had been done to recover the money, the VC said the university had gone to court, but the case was still pending and the doctors’ whereabouts were unknown. Before leaving, the doctors had signed agreements and pledged land documents as surety, and that land will be auctioned to recover the expenses once the court decides the case.
Besides the letters to immigration authorities and embassies, the PAC directed the university to recover the entire amount spent on the three doctors.
Giving details of the fake degree case, officials said nursing lecturer Farida Badar was recruited in 2016 and resigned after her BS Nursing degree was found to be fake. Her starting salary was Rs45,000 a month and her last salary Rs1.5 million. The PAC ordered recovery of the salaries she drew over 10 years.
Separately, the chairman asked how much the university earned from fees and how much it received from the HEC. The VC said SMBBMU has 33 affiliated colleges and institutes and 12 hostels, and earns Rs1 billion from student fees. The Sindh government provides Rs3 billion and the federal HEC Rs150 million. The university has 3,000 undergraduate and 800 postgraduate students.
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