NAB records Sindh health secretary’s statement over corruption charges

KARACHI: Sindh Health Secretary Fazlullah Pechuho recorded his statement with National Accountability Bureau on Monday over charges of corruption in purchase of medicines and contracting out health facilities throughout the province.

According to NAB sources, the anti-graft body started investigation after embezzlement of billions of rupees was reported from the health department.

A notice was issued to the secretary general of the Sindh administration, which stated that NAB asked the secretary to produce record of seven officials of Sindh health department, including two additional secretaries Rehan Iqbal Baloch and Jamaluddin Jalalani, deputy secretary Dadlo Zuhrani and four others, before a NAB investigator.

Most of these officials, including Rehan Iqbal and Zuhrani, are considered frontmen of the Sindh health secretary, who is the brother-in-law of Pakistan Peoples Party Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, and remained serving with him in the education department prior to his posting in the health department.

An official of NAB Sindh has been reported by The News as saying that they were receiving a lot of complaints and material on rampant corruption in the Sindh health department since Pechuho was posted as health secretary; he also got his team or ‘frontmen’ posted in the health department from the education department.

A senior official of NAB said that the extent of corruption in the health and education departments was so ‘huge’ that they had formed two separate teams of investigations to work on the allegations and complaints separately as billions of rupees were plundered in both education and health departments by Pechuho, the report states.