Abu Dhabi: A junior employee at Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Arab Pakistani School here has “vanished” after collecting school fees from parents, officials said on Monday.

A reader told Gulf News that an individual, S.I., posing as the school’s accountant, called parents at the beginning of the new school year two weeks ago, asking them to pay their children’s school fees for one semester or risk losing their seats.

A Pakistani embassy official confirmed the incident: “The suspect worked for the admissions office and was not authorised by anyone to handle any cash. He did that secretively and fraudulently. He called some parents to get money from them. We are investigating how much money he got away with and are committed to bringing the perpetrator to justice and ensure that parents’ money will be returned.”

“We still don’t know how many students were affected by this as it’s still a matter of investigations; however, I don’t think that many were affected by it,” the official added.

Suhail Ahmad, a 12th grade student at the school, said that he had received a fake duplicate of an admission form from S.I. which indicated that he had failed two classes.

“I was asked to pay Dh755 to sit for the supplementary exams for the courses that S.I. claimed I had failed according to the fake duplicate. After giving him money, he refused to give me a receipt saying ‘I don’t know why but the school isn’t issuing one’,” Ahmad said.

“The school had also told me that the principal, Tabinda Al Ghizala, had also quit on the same day that S.I. fled,” he added.

The school was not available for comment.

“On the request of the school’s board of trustees, the embassy has contacted the UAE government and the Pakistani government to bring this man to justice. We condemn any acts of fraud in the strongest possible terms,” the Embassy official added.

The Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Arab Pakistani School takes in students from kindergarten up to grade 12 and is owned by the Pakistani Embassy. It was founded in 1975 and has approximately 2,000 students.

Maisoon Mubarak is a trainee at Gulf News