National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal on Thursday reviewed the latest progress on NAB’s awareness, prevention and enforcement policy on “Our Faith – Corruption-Free Pakistan” at the NAB Headquarters.
Speaking on the occasion, the NAB chairman said the anti-graft watchdog was mandated to carry out awareness and prevention functions against corruption in pursuance of Section 33C of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO).
He said the NAB’s awareness, prevention and enforcement policy remained very successful, in which the people were informed about the ill-effects of corruption.
“Under the policy, the NAB has been engaging different governmental, non-governmental organisations, media, civil society and other segments of society to join hands with NAB’s awareness and prevention efforts in order to aware people, especially students in universities/colleges, at an early age,” he said in a statement issued on Thursday.
He said that as per the positive feedback received from various segments of society, the NAB’s awareness and prevention efforts had been effectively highlighted by the bureau’s media wing free of cost in the print, electronic and social media throughout the country, which had been appreciated by all segments of society.
He said the present management of NAB had taken various measures to check corruption and to nab corrupt elements, proclaimed offenders and absconders.
He said the NAB’s top most priority was to eradicate corruption from Pakistan by using all its resources. He said that due to the NAB’s proactive anti-corruption strategy “Accountability for All”, the bureau had become a vibrant and reputable organisation. According to “reports and surveys of different reputable national and international organisations like PILDAT, Mishal Pakistan, Transparency International, World Economic Forum, Gallup and Gilani”, around 59 percent of the people had shown their confidence in NAB, he said in the statement. He said the results showed the “people’s confidence and trust” in NAB’s performance “across the board as per law”.
He said the bureau had opened its door for citizens’ corruption-related complaints and received 44,315 applications, which were thoroughly scrutinised by the complaints scrutiny committees.
He said that on the basis of prima ficia evidence, 1,713 applications were converted into ‘complaint verifications’, which were again scrutinised and – after obtaining point of view of all those concerned – converted into 877 inquiries and subsequently 227 investigations.
“On the basis of across the board accountability, NAB had not only filed 600 corruption reference during the tenure of the present management of NAB but also recovered Rs 4,300 million from corrupt elements, which was a record achievement.”
According to the statement, the recovery made by the NAB was then returned to thousands of victims and some government departments, but not a single rupee had been received by any NAB employee, as they considered their duty a national service. “In order to address problems of the business community, the NAB has established a separate cell at the NAB Headquarters, and a director has been made head of that cell,” the statement read.
The chairman said that the bureau had established 60 prevention committees across the country in order to identify loopholes and suggest ways and means – in consultation with departments concerned – to ease out their service delivery systems in order to address the problems of people at large. He said the step proved to be very successful in identifying loopholes and thus their solutions with consultation. Due to the NAB’s efforts and coordination with various public government departments, service delivery, especially one window operations of the CDA and ICT, have been improving gradually, he said.
The NAB chairman said that youth was the future of the country. “In order to aware youth about the ill-effects of corruption, we have signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the HEC” to educate students at colleges/universities throughout the country and create awareness against corruption, as “youth are considered a vanguard in this fight”. He said the bureau had also emphasised on the character building of the youth.
“The concept of establishment of Character Building Societies (CBS) in colleges and universities remained also very successful,” he said, adding that more than 50,000 CBS had been established at colleges/universities so far.
The NAB chairman reiterated his resolve to eradicate corruption from the country with iron hands for a corruption-free Pakistan, and hoped that this dream would come true through collected efforts by all stakeholders.