Manipulating the mid-day meal scheme in schools
30-6-2010 | IslamWeb
Question:
What is the opinion of the Olma-E-Din (Clergies) and Muftiyane Shara-E-Matin (Priests) about the following Problem.
Mid Day meal is a govt. scheme and under this scheme mid-day-meal is supplied to the children of primary schools and madarsas. For this the govt. bears all the expenditures including cooking charges.
In our city for distributing mid-day meal to the students of a madarsa, a contractor has with drawn about twenty lacks of rupees from the concerned govt. department. The Nazim (Chief Authority) of the madarsa gave a bogus receipt and certificate to the contractor to this effect that the money has been spent in the right way and he (Nazim) him self took the share of the ransome while actually coarse kind of biscuits and some unedible grains were given to the students. The children are not getting the dishes and articles for which the money from the govt. is reimburse and allotted. The children are kept devoid of their shares. The madarsa committee takes no action against the contractors instead they (the office bearers of madarsa) themself are involved in this nefarious activity.
The Misuse of govt. money and the manipulation by the committee members of the madarsa and the contractor is legitunate in the eyes of sharaa-or not. If not kindly issue the opinion and the verdict regarding serious problem.
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
Cheating the government and consuming its money unjustly by the contractor and the people in charge of the school is forbidden, as the Prophet said: “Indeed, some men wrongly acquire Allaah’s property and they will go to Hell on the Day of Judgment.” [Al-Bukhari]
All of those people are sinful as they are cooperating in sin, and they are responsible for the money they took unjustly because the people who are in charge of the school are representatives of the government in receiving the meals and other things that the contractor agreed to offer. Therefore, receiving the meals in a way that is contrary to the description that is agreed upon and issuing forged certificates testifying that they received what is required from the contractor in a perfect manner, is forbidden cheating and a sinful forgery, and they should guarantee all that money, that is because an authorized person (agent) is only permitted to act according to the limits set to him by the authorizer, and if he violates any of these limits, he will be held responsible for that because of him doing what he is not permitted to do, and in this case the agent (the school committee) has deceived the authorizer (the government) and cooperated with the contractor in sin.
Therefore, it is an obligation to advise those people so that they would stop their transgression, and they should repent to Allaah from what they did. If this is of no avail, then their matter should be reported to the concerned authorities so that they would be punished.
Allaah Knows best.