NAB committed to eradicate corruption with professionalism

Islamabad :National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that eradication of corruption is top priority of the bureau, which is committed to eradicate corruption with absolute professionalism, transparency and on merit with iron hands, says a press release.

“Corruption is mother of all evils which undermines development and is one of the major hurdles in the way of prosperity and progress of the country.  Considering these facts, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was established as Pakistan's apex Anti-corruption organization which is assigned with the responsibility of elimination of corruption and Corrupt Practices and recovers looted money from corrupt and deposits it in national exchequer,” he stated while addressing as chief guest at the inaugural session of 22nd Annual DGs Conference of NAB held at NAB Headquarter. The conference will continue till September 27, 2017.

He said that after assumption of responsibilities as Chairman NAB, he had taken various initiatives to revamp NAB. “NAB has devised a Comprehensive and effective National Anti-Corruption Strategy comprising of holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement by adopting zero tolerance policy across the board to eradicate corruption and corrupt practices. He said that NAB operates under the National Accountability Ordinance-1999 which is extended to whole of Pakistan including Fata and Gilgit Baltistan,” he added.

He said that the present management of NAB has devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System in 2014 in order to further improve the performance of NAB Headquarter and all Regional Bureaus. Under Quantified Grading System, NAB Headquarter and Regional Bureau’s are being evaluated for the last three years on Annual and Midterm basis at a given criteria which has proved very successful and the performance of NAB’s Regional Bureaus is being increased day by day due to regular monitoring and inspection.

He said that NAB has devised a state of the art Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) which was introduced at NAB Headquarter and NAB’s regional Bureaus in order to measure the effectiveness of performance which help in enhancing the operational, monitoring and evaluation capabilities of NAB at NAB Headquarter. The main purpose of effective Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) is to cater the needs of all concerned having salient features of maintenance of data at each stage including complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record proceedings of Regional Board Meetings and Executive Board Meetings including case brief, decisions made.

In order to further improve the capacity building of investigation officers of NAB, UNODC and Australian National Police have arranged capacity building training courses for NAB investigation Officers/Prosecutors. Recently, National Crime Agency (NCA) UK has carried out Training Need Analysis (TNA) for NAB in consultation with the concerned Division of NAB. The contents of five courses have been finalized and first course will start from October 2, 2017 in Pakistan in 06 identified fields by experts. He said that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is also in pipeline between NAB and NCA for cooperation in the Anti-Corruption work and sharing of training facilities after approval of the authorities at both ends. He said that NAB intends to establish its own National Anti-Corruption Training Academy on the pattern of Malaysian Anti-Corruption Academy in Islamabad in order to arrange capacity building trainings of its Investigation Officers/Prosecutors.

He said that NAB in order to create Awareness against the ill effects of corruption among the youth of Pakistan, NAB in collaboration with HEC signed MOU in 2015. NAB have been established over 45, 000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) in universities, colleges/schools to create awareness against corruption as youths are considered a vanguard in this fight. NAB has set the target that at the end of 2017, the number of Character Building Societies (CBS) should reach at least at 55 thousands in order to aware students about the ill effects of corruption.