Anti-corruption: SOPs devised to rationalise workload

ISLAMABAD: During the past year, National Accountability Body (NAB) has devised a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) which has helped rationalise the workload and timelines for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases within a maximum time period of 10 months.

This was stated by the NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry while chairing a meeting to review progress of the bureau at the NAB headquarters on Friday.During the meeting Chaudhry said that corruption was the mother of all evils and that corruption corrodes the country like a cancer.

He added that creating awareness about and prevention of corruption was a challenging task and that it was their moral duty to spread awareness about the ill effects of corruption.

All the segments of the society should play their due role for eradication of corruption from the country.

To tackle corruption, the NAB chief said that they had chalked out a comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS).

Under the strategy, the bureau had adopted a zero tolerance policy towards corruption and undertaken a proactive approach to curb corruption and corrupt practices.

NAB, he said, during the last 16 years had received about 326,694 complaints from individuals and organisations – both public and private. During this period, Chaudhry said that NAB had authorised 10,992 complaint verifications, 7,303 inquiries, 3,648 investigations, filed 2,667 corruption references in the respective accountability courts with an overall conviction ratio at about 76 per cent.

NAB’s prime focus, he said, was on cases of cheating the public at large using fraudulent financial companies, bank frauds, wilful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority and embezzlement of state funds by government servants etc.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2016.