Graft in govt spending has negative impact on development

NAB chief directs new recruits to maintain zero tolerance towards corruption

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB)Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry Tuesday said corruption in government spending had a negative impact on development programmes and resulted in a perpetual increase in the cost of creation and maintenance of public assets.

“Our motherland is confronted with an albatross of corruption, which is eating into our precious national resources. The particular deadliness of disease lies in its self-perpetuation and any corrupt act or practice sets in motion a vicious cycle in which impact of corruption becomes a source for further acts of corruption,” he said.

The NAB chairman was addressing a ceremony organised at the Sihala Police College ahead of training for newly inducted NAB officers.

“There is no shortcut to hard work. NAB accords high priority to the training of its investigation officers (IOs) and prosecutors,” he said, adding that NAB selected best out of the best officers and not a single ‘sifarish’ or non-merited selection had taken place.

He said NAB firmly believed that all those selected on merit would be able to do justice to their national duty to eradicate corruption.

The investigation officers will be part of the eighth Investigator’s Basic Induction Course-(IBIC)-VIII at the college.

“It was a very competitive process and to maintain transparency and fair play the selection process was outsourced to the National Testing Service (NTS), which conducted academic as well as psychological tests,” the NAB chief said, adding that they had received around 94,165 applications.

Of these, he said, 80,377 candidates were shortlisted for 97 posts.

He said that NAB had chalked out a comprehensive training plan which was spread over a period of approximately five months.

“In the absence of NAB’s own academy, we requested the training facilities of Police College Sihala,” he said.

He said NAB personnel followed a strict code of ethics and conduct as a zero tolerance against corruption was strictly enforced.

Irrespective of their status and social standing, he said that the anti-corruption watchdog had investigated and prosecuted the corrupt. In this regard, he said that NAB accords high priority to cases of cheating public at large which was a serious offence under NAO, he added.

He said NAB was essentially a complaint-driven organisation and added that an exhaustive system of cognisance of cases had been formulated to standardise selection of cases for processing.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2017.