According to Ministry of Information Secretary Shahira Shah, the degrees of as many as 85 employees of the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) have been found to be fake, leading the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to order a scrutiny of all PTV employees.
During a meeting with the PAC on Tuesday, audit officials told the committee that in 2006, PTV Managing Director Arshad Khan had recruited people with fake degrees.
The Information Secretary said that currently an investigation was being carried out into the degrees of the PTV employees. So far, 85 employees were found to have fake degrees, while the degrees of 1,644 employees had already been sent for verification.
She said that the salaries of the 85 employees in question had not been withdrawn. The PAC instructed scrutinizing the degrees of all PTV employees, as well as recovering the salaries of employees with fake degrees.
PAC member Shibli Faraz said that by recruiting a number of ‘useless people’, there was now a mafia in the PTV.
Some PAC members criticized the PTV for becoming a stooge of whatever government was in power. PAC Member Rohail Asghar said, “We have made the PTV the slave of every government as whenever a government comes, the PTV MD is changed. As soon as the new government comes, the picture of the previous prime minister is replaced with the new one.”
