PESHAWAR: The Chief Minister`s Secretariat has issued show-cause notices to10 employees, including a former director-general and the current additional director-general, seekingtheir separate responses to corruption charges against them.

Their failure to come up with satisfactory responses within 14 days will lead to dismissal from service and recovery ofRs170 million from each of them, according to the notices.

`After the passage of that 14-day period, it`ll be presumed that the employees have no defence to put in, so an ex-parte action should be taken against them,` read the notice.

`I, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, chief minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as competent authorityundertheGovernment Servants (Efficiency and Discipline)Rules, 2011, do hereby serve you that consequent upon the completion of inquiry for which you were given opportunity of hearing and going through the findings and recommendations of the inquiry officer, material on record and other connected papers including your defence before the committee, I am satisfied that you have committed the acts/omission of inefficiency, misconduct and corruption specified in Rule 3 of the said rules, read the notice.

It added that the chief minister, as the competent authority, had tentatively decided to impose upon them (officials) the penalty of dismissal from service along with recovery of Rs171 million under Rules 4 of those rules.

`You are required to show cause as to why the aforesaid penalty shouldn`t be imposed upon you and to intimate whetheryou desire to be heard in person.

`All have been asked to respond within the due period or face ex-parte action,` read the notice.

The officials, who were put on notice, included former DG (health) Dr Shaukat Ali (BPS-20), current additional DG (health) Dr Siraj Mohammad(BS-19), former director (public health) Dr Irshad Ali Roghani (BPS18), logistics officer Khurram Shehzad (BPS-17), drug inspector Ziaullah (BPS-17), account officer Fazl-i-Diyan (BPS-16), computer operator Zakaria (BPS-16), computer operator Ali Nawaz (BPS-16), office assistant Umar Khitab (BPS-16) and pharmacy technician Mohammad Islam (BPS-16).

Officials told Dawn that the action was taken after a high-level inquiry committee, formed by the provincial government, detected Rs1.9 billion corruption in the purchase of medicines for public sector hospitals in the financial year 2023-24 and recommended recovery of the amount from the relevant people.

They said in Sept this year, the government notified a committee, consisting of additional chief secretary, establishment and finance secretaries, and adviser to the chief minister on anticorruption retired Brigadier Mohammad Musaddiq Abbasi, to probe the allegations of misappropriation of medicine funds during the last caretaker government.

The officials said the committee sent its report to the CM, recommending disciplinary action against thosefoundguilty.

The inquiry report had revealed that the former DG placed orders with different firms for the supply of Rs4.44 billion medicines without seeking demands from hospitals, so medicines were unnecessarily procured. It noted that commonly, procurements took only after all hospitals furnished demanded lists.

The report said the Rs1.91 billion items were procured in violation of the government`s policy.

It added that the records showed that the drugs kept in the main store valued at around Rs800 million but the suppliers were paid Rs3.17 billion.

The report revealed that many of those irregularities were detected in an earlier fact-finding inquiry by the health department and its findings were sent to the chief secretary for action.

There followed the formation of another committee, which verified those findings, prompting the CM to issue separate show-cause notices to those officials.

All those officials, including the former DG, have denied corruption charges.