Annual review: NAB Lahore’s performance ‘excellent’

Chaudhry says the bureau is committed to eradicating corruption

LAHORE: “Corruption is the mother of all evils. It undermines development and rule of law. It causes delays in the completion of development projects and causes huge losses to the national exchequer,” said National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said on Friday.

He was addressing a meeting at the NAB Regional Bureau to review its performance on the basis of an annual inspection conducted by the chairman’s inspection and monitoring team.

The NAB chairman said the bureau was committed to eradicating corruption across the board.

He said the NAB was established in 1999 as Pakistan’s apex anti-corruption organisation and assigned the responsibility of elimination of corruption through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement and recovery of stolen money.

He said the NAB operated under the National Accountability Ordinance (1999) which was applicable in the FATA and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The chairman was told that in 2015, NAB Lahore had received 4,874 complaints. He was that told the bureau had arrested 156 people and filed 111 corruption references during 2015. He was told that the bureau in Lahore had recovered Rs1056.653 million.

NAB Chairman’s Inspection and Monitoring Team carried out the annual inspection from February 10 to February 12 to review and evaluate the performance of NAB Lahore Bureau on the basis of newly introduced Partly-Quantified Grading System (PQGS).

NAB Lahore’s performance was categorised Outstanding/Excellent with an 89.24 per cent Operational Efficiency Index (OEI) under the system.

The NAB chairman appreciated the performance of the bureau under the supervision of Major (r) Syed Burhan Ali.

He said NAB officials must work hard to further improve their performance.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2016.