Sheikh Waqas Akram A-Level certificate declared fake, (Pakistan's Former Education Minister) now Leader of PML-N
In a damning indictment of Pakistan’s latest education minister Sheikh Waqas Akram, the Cambridge Education System (CES) of the UK has declared his A-level certificate as fake.
This puts a huge question mark on the veracity of his BA degree as well as his political future.A new entrant to the PML-N, Waqas had the audacity to defend his fake certificates on the floor of the National Assembly, claiming that he did his A-level in 1995 and his certificate was verified by Inter Board Committee of Chairmen (IBCC).
However, investigations carried out confirmed that his IBCC Equivalence certificates as well as its verification certificates were also fabricated. According to documents available, the chief executive of the Cambridge Education System (CES) Ann Punits has confirmed that Waqas Akram’s certificate cannot be verified from the CES record.
“It is stated that the minister in 1995 passed the GCE A Level exams in three required subjects from the University of Cambridge International Examination (UK). The minister applied to the Inter Board Committee of Chairmen, Government of Pakistan, for issuance of equivalence certificate, which was provided by the IBCC dated 15.12.1995. The equivalence certificate issued by the Inter Board Committee of Chairmen, again has been verified by the IBCC dated 11.08.2010,” Waqas had stated in his clarification.
However, as the saying goes in Urdu, “in order to hide one lie, you have to speak a hundred lies”, it turned out that the former education minister’s IBCC equivalence certificate is also forged as it bears the signature of Dr Parveen Shahid as Secretary IBCC.
The News verified from the IBCC records as well as family sources of Dr Parveen that the officer only had a short stint with the IBCC as secretary after the year 2000.
Investigations also revealed that in 1995, Dr Parveen was a junior officer in Grade-18 while the IBCC secretary was a Grade-20 post. Apparently, the fake IBCC certificate was created after copying the contents of some genuine certificate issued after 2000 when Dr Parveen was serving as the secretary IBCC.
The ‘artists’ who fabricated the document failed to check Dr Parveen’s tenure in IBCC.Similarly, the IBCC verification certificate that according to Waqas was issued on August 11, 2010 also appears to be forged as Muhammad Usman Khan, assistant secretary of IBCC whose signatures appear on the ‘verification certificate’ also denies having signed the document.