HEC facing difficulty in identifying fake degree holders

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

* Sources say matriculation, Intermediate certificates will have to be reviewed as well
* PU sends final verification report to HEC

By Adnan Lodhi

LAHORE: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is facing a difficulty in identifying the fake degree holders sitting in parliament and the provincial assemblies even after sending the degrees for verification to different universities across the country, Daily Times learnt on Tuesday.

According to sources in the HEC, the institution is struggling hard to identify the forged documents because of the tampering carried out by the fake degree holders, adding that the HEC is now planning to seek help from the government.

The HEC is facing complications in this regard due to similar names written in the universities’ records, and the varsities have no method of distinguishing one from the other.

Sources from the HEC told Daily Times that there are a number of parliamentarians who purchased degrees or tampered university records with the help of “corrupt officials” in the varsity’s “secrecy branch”. They further said that these parliamentarians, with the help of the corrupt officials, bargained with the real degree holders and obtained ownership of the degrees, adding that in some cases they even tampered with the university records, making it almost “impossible” for the HEC now to identify the fake degree holders.

According to the sources, there have been a number of cases where corruption due to similarity in names was revealed, but it was done only and when the opponent candidates identified and complained against the fake degree holders, while the HEC has no proper procedure to identify the fake degree holders.

Matriculation and Intermediate: They said that such fake degree holders could possibly not be identified without the verification of their matriculation and Intermediate certificates as well, adding that the HEC was now weighing the option of checking these certificates of the parliamentarians.

PU Controller of Examinations Zahid Karim Khan told Daily Times that he had highlighted this issue of ‘similar names’ in the very beginning.

Verification report: Separately, the PU sent a verification report of about 217 degrees of parliamentarians to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Tuesday, out of which six degrees have been declared bogus.

Khan said that 11 degrees of senators, 55 degrees of MNAs and 15 degrees of MNAs – elected against reserved seats have been found genuine. Similarly, 97 degrees of directly elected Punjab Assembly members and 28 degrees of MPAs elected against reserved seats have been found genuine while degrees of five MPAs elected against reserved seats have been declared bogus.

Four degrees of MPAs belonging to the Khyber Pakhtunkha Assembly were found authentic, whereas one degree of an MPA of the KP Assembly has been declared fake.

Zahid Karim said that the varsity has returned the photocopies of eight parliamentarians’ degrees to the HEC, owing to their vagueness and illegibility.

He said that out of the 313 degrees sent to the PU by the HEC, only 89 degrees remain to be verified. The verification report regarding these remaining degrees will be sent to the HEC as soon as possible, he added.

A spokesman from the PU said that the entire record relating to the 313 degrees is available with the PU Examinations Branch. However, the number of degrees of parliamentarians supplied to the PU is far greater than the degrees sent to the other universities across the country. In addition, the verification of parliamentarians’ degrees is a highly sensitive and responsible assignment.

Therefore, the special committee constituted by PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran, is minutely scrutinising the record of these degrees to confirm their authenticity. He said that the vice chancellor has appreciated the hard work put in by the committee members in order to verify the degrees for authenticity.