Bhopal: State police headquarters has instructed the Economic Offence Wing to investigate into the fake recruitment of multipurpose health workers in health department. Allegedly around 2500 MPHW have managed to get job on the basis of fake appointment letters and for years they have been enjoying the salaries and all the perks. Highly places sources said that DGP has instructed the EOW to look into scam and bring the culprits to book.
The first case of fake recruitment in the health department had come to light in Datia district in the year 2016, however today it has spread its tentacles in almost half of the state. In the initial investigations conducted by the Datia police, involvement of chief medical officer and treasury officer had come to fore. Here in connivance with treasury clerk, salary of five MPHW were released without verifying the code number from the health directorate.
Following a complaint by the treasury officer, Datia police had registered a case and it was during the course of investigation that fake appointment racket was unveiled. Datia Superintendent of Police, Mayank Awasthi informed that initially five arrests were made in connection with the scam, the number has now reached 31. While been arrests have been made in this regard, he added. As many as 115 persons have come under the scanner in this connection.
During the investigation it was found that racketeers had issued fake appointment letters and made good money. Such letters were given to a number of people across the state. The racketeers apparently had managed to win over the treasury officials and thus got the salaries released without any verification in other districts as well.
As the scam was not confined to Datia district and had spread to other parts, the SP forwarded the case to the EOW for further investigations. Interestingly, EOW gad registered the preliminary enquiry some two years back, but was not conducting any investigations. Now, since the DGP has intervened, the agency officials has no option but to look into the case afresh.
The sources say that the probe into the scam will bring to fore involvement of a good numbers of health directorate officials. Every month the CM&HOs have been sending the report to the directorate about number of staff working under them. To handle MPHW staff and their working a director and a dedicated staff is in place. Strangely, the health department officials failed to see anything amiss and it were the officials of some another department who noticed the scam and exposed it.
Crores of rupees withdrawn from exchequer for their salaries
Interestingly the fake employees have withdrawn crores of rupees from the government exchequer. For all these years the chief medical officers have prepared and forwarded the salary bills of these staffers without taking care to cross check their authenticity from the health directorate, which is mandatory for their accounting staff to do so.
