‘NAB committed to curbing corruption with iron hands’

Islamabad: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is committed to curb corruption with iron hands by adopting zero tolerance policy.

This was stated by NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry while chairing a monthly coordination meeting to review latest progress on the decisions taken in the previous monthly coordination meeting held here on Thursday.

He said that the results and feedback received about NAB’s proactive National Anti-Corruption Strategy were excellent.The number of complaints, inquiries and investigations were almost double as compared to the same period of 2014 to 2017. The comparative figures for the latest three years are indicative of the hard work being put in all ranks of NAB staff in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where fight against corruption is being taken as a national duty. He said that for the last three years under the tenure of present management, NAB had filed more than 150 corruption references in the respective Accountability Courts and recovered Rs 50 billion from corrupt elements.

The PILDAT in its report stated that above 42% people have shown trust upon NAB against 30 % for police and 29 % for government officials.Due to effective coordination of Operations Division and Prosecution Division of NAB, the overall conviction ratio in respective Accountability Courts is about 76 percent which is a remarkable achievement of any investigation agency in investigation of White Collar Crimes.

He said that NAB had devised Standard Operating Procedure(SOP) to rationalize the workload and timelines had been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months- from complaint verification-to-inquiry-to-investigation and finally to a reference in the Accountability Court.

He said that through detailed introspection and analysis of organizational weaknesses, overhaul of procedures and business processes, all pillars of the organisation i.e. Operations, Prosecution, Human Resource Development and Awareness and Prevention had been reactivated.

He said that an effective Internal Accountability Mechanism (IAM) was placed in NAB in order to weed out such officers/officials who proved to be involved in corruption and misconduct.He said that NAB had devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System in NAB inorder to review and monitor the performance of NAB regional Bureaus on Annual Basis.

Under Quantified Grading System, NAB Regional Bureau’s are being evaluated for the last three years on annual basis at a given criteria which has proved very successful and the performance of NAB’s Regional Bureaus is increasing day by day due to regular monitoring and inspection.

He said that on the basis of lesson learnt, we had started Mid Term review of all the Regional Bureaus of NAB.Moreover, NAB is conducting Annual Director General’s Conference regularly at NAB Headquarter in order to share best practices, exchange of ideas and to overcome weaknesses if any.

This year, the tentative program for conduct of Annual DG Conference is in September.He said that Pakistan’s ranking improved by four points from126th to 122nd position in the Annual Global Competitiveness Report of World Economic Forum 2016-17. He said that Global Competitiveness Index of World Economic Forum was very encouraging for Pakistan which would help improving Pakistan’s image among the community of nations.

He said corruption affected the common man, describing the general public ‘worst sufferers’ when the funds supposed to be utilized for their welfare were misappropriated.“So, the improvement in Pakistan’s ranking, will be ultimately beneficial for the common man as the funds meant for their welfare and well being will be utilized for provision of basic facilities including health, education and clean drinking water to them,” he said.

The Chairman said that NAB was a complaint driven organisation, adding it had taken a new initiative named “Citizen Friendly NAB” in order to reach out to the complainants.Under “Citizen Friendly NAB” initiative, existing Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) has generated a system based on complaint registration acknowledgement system to share the information with complainant and Unique Identification Number (UIN).

The main purpose of “Citizen Friendly NAB” initiative will not only to help the complainants to track down the latest status of their complaints submitted to NAB in effective manner but will also enable NAB to be more transparent and responsive in term of interaction with complainants and tracking the complaint progress by using modern technology for better interaction with citizen. — APP