Eradicating corruption: NAB officials directed to work honestly

Chairman says integrity should be yardstick of investigators

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has directed officials of the anti-graft body to work honestly and diligently to weed out corruption.

He issued the directives while chairing a meeting to review the performance of all divisions of NAB headquarters for the year 2015, said a press release issued here on Thursday.

The NAB’s Inspection and Monitoring Team (CIMT) carried out inspection of all divisions of NAB headquarters and findings of the evaluation were shared with the chairman in the meeting.

The NAB chairman reiterated that the anti-graft body was committed to eradicating corruption by adopting zero tolerance policy. He directed a senior member of the CIMT to send the findings of evaluation report to all regional bureaus and divisions to further improve their performance.

He appreciated the CI&MT for its good work and added that there was always room for improvements.

A senior member of the CIMT informed the meeting that annual inspections of all regional bureaus and divisions was carried out to assess their strength and weaknesses on the basis of partly quantified grading system (PQGS).

He said that under the grading system, the performance of all regional bureaus and divisions was evaluated at a uniform criteria and 80 per cent mark was considered “outstanding”, between 60 per cent to 79 per cent was considered as “very good”, between 50 to 57 per cent was considered as “good”, while less than 40 per cent was considered as “below average”.

He informed the meeting that  a standard operating procedure (SOP) has been approved to rationalise the workload and timelines have 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 file a reference in respective accountability courts.

In order to ensure uniformity and standardisation, SOPs have been revised after a gap of 10 years to make them more responsive for smooth conduct of operational activities in accordance with the law and to bring further improvements in the performance of divisions of NAB headquarter.

It was highlighted that results of all regional bureaus and divisions was found comparatively better than the last year due to continued oversight and monitoring.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2016.