NAB chief seeks suggestions to ensure meritocracy

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has asked NAB officials to suggest ways to improve regulatory mechanism of federal and provincial governments for meritocracy and compliance with relevant laws.

He said NAB Prevention Committees were constituted to deal with Capital Development Authority (CDA), Ministry of Religious Affairs, Agriculture and National Food Security, National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, FBR, PID, Health, Education, Revenue, Housing, Cooperatives, etc. The Prevention Committee on Ministry of Religious Affairs forwarded recommendations to the ministry, which were considered to provide better facilities to Hajis. "Due to this reason, arrangements made by the ministry were appreciated by Hajis," said Chaudhry during a meeting held to review the overall performance of the NAB at NAB Headquarters.

He said the NAB had been assigned the duty to eradicate corruption from the country. "Therefore, we have to redouble our efforts to come up to expectations, but I must bring on record the hard work and commitment shown by all ranks of NAB officials to their national duty, particularly in the last two years,” he said. The NAB prosecuted the corrupt and recovered Rs 279 billion looted public money since its inception. "The funds allocated to the NAB since its creation are Rs 12 billion, which is only 4.2 per cent of the recoveries made by the NAB." He said the NAB present leadership had taken several measures to correct structural deficiencies and create an enabling environment to achieve NAB objectives. A merit-based recruitment system was introduced and 104 investigation officers were recruited.

Besides, he said the NAB introduced Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) for better career planning and HR development and conducted about 400 refresher and capacity building courses with the help of local and foreign partners, introduced 10-month timelines for all operations, two months for complaint verification, four months for inquiry and four months for investigation, revision of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and introduced Quantified Grading System for objective performance evaluation, established three regional bureaus in Multan, Sukkur and Gilgit-Baltistan, set up Forensic Science Laboratory and introduced internal accountability mechanism and monitoring and evaluation system. Chaudhry said the monitoring and evaluation system helped improve performance and achieve results to improve current and future management of outputs. He said this system was an important management tool to track progress and facilitated decision-making besides establishing links between past, present and future actions. He said the initiatives undertaken by the present leadership were bearing fruits. "This has been acknowledged by independent monitoring agencies in the country and abroad," he said.