Anti-corruption body’s backlog rises

142 proclaimed offenders and 55 court absconders at large in Lahore.

LAHORE:

The number of proclaimed offenders (POs) and court absconders (CAs) the Anti-Corruption Establishment Punjab has yet to arrest rose from 300 (in 2010) to 420 in February 2011.

Most of the absconders are Police and Revenue Department officials.

The list includes Brig (retd) Farooq Ahmed Maan, former chairman of the Punjab Co-operatives Board of Liquidation. Maan has been declared an absconder in three cases registered in 2009 charging him with corruption, misuse of authority, fake allotments of state land and embezzlement of funds.

As many as 142 POs and 55 CAs belong to Lahore, 55 POs and seven CAs to Bahawalpur, six POs and 30  CAs to Faisalabad, 23 POs and seven CAs to Rawalpindi, 17 POs to Sargodha, 23 POs and five CAs to Multan, 15 POs and 12 CAs to Gujranwala and 22 POs to Dera Ghazi Khan.

An ACE official speaking on condition of anonymity said that most of the POs and the CAs were still working for the government. He believed the field officers were not performing their duties properly because of the absence of a permanent director general.

Javed Akhtar, the population welfare secretary, was given additional charge of the ACE DG after Kazim Ali Malik’s resignation in February 2011. Malik, a retired district and sessions judge, had to resign after a Supreme Court verdict against re-employment of retired government officials. He was re-employed as the ACE DG in October 2009.

The official said that since taking additional charge of the office, Akhtar had only been visiting the ACE office twice a week. Akhter was not available for comments.

Dr Saleh Tahir, the ACE additional director general, rejected the impression that the establishment was not doing its job properly. He said the number of cases processed by the establishment had risen in the past year and that was why the number of POs and CAs had also gone up.

As many as 1,567 officials are currently employed at the ACE. The provincial government allocated Rs462.221 million for the ACE in 2010-11. Another Rs43.69 million were paid in salaries to the nine special judges and 80 lower staff members of the ACE courts.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 23^rd, 2011.