The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Sindh Assembly has directed all public universities in Sindh to verify the academic degrees of their employees through the Higher Education Commission (HEC) within three months. The order follows the exposure of fraudulent credentials at the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS).
The committee took action after learning that 10 DUHS employees had been hired using fake degrees. During a review of the university’s audit reports from 2021–2023, it was revealed that only 450 of DUHS’s 3,500 staff members had undergone HEC verification to date.
Audit officials informed the PAC that a large number of contractual appointments were made without proper academic or background checks, rendering the hiring process irregular and vulnerable to forged documents. DUHS allocates approximately Rs 2.33 billion annually for employee salaries.
Despite the audit department flagging the issue in June of last year, DUHS had not provided an official response until the committee’s intervention. University management stated that they had floated three tenders for degree verification but received no bids. They subsequently engaged HRSG Outsourcing Company directly to conduct the verification, which is now underway and has already validated several degrees.
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DUHS Vice Chancellor Dr Nazli Hussain informed the PAC that eight of the ten employees caught with fake degrees have been terminated, while the remaining two have been served show-cause notices and will soon be dismissed. She added that between July 2021 and June 2025, the university hired 3,023 contractual employees, of whom only 54 have been regularized so far.