'NAB curbing corruption with iron hands'

NAB received around 0.3 million complaints during the last three and a half years

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry has said that they are committed to curbing corruption with iron hands and make Pakistan a corruption-free country.

Chairing a meeting to review monthly progress of the decisions taken in the last coordination meeting held at National Accountability Bureau (NAB) headquarters in Islamabad on Friday, NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said that corruption was the biggest hurdle in the way of making Pakistan a prosperous state.

In view of this, the bureau was established with a mandate to root out corruption and recover ill-gotten money from the corrupt, he said, adding that the anti-graft watchdog has so far recovered Rs288 billion from those who had plundered money from the national exchequer.

Chaudhry said that over the past three and a half years, the NAB received around 0.3 million complaints from various private and public organisations. Of these, the bureau authorised 11,581 complaints, conducted 3,846 investigations and filed 2,808 corruption references while the overall conviction rate was 76 percent.

He said the number of complaints, inquiries and investigations conducted during this time had almost doubled as compared to the figures of 2014-17.

The comparative figures vouch for the hard work being done by the officers and reflect enhanced public trust in the organization.

The PILDAT in its report supports the position stated above as 42% people trusted NAB against 30% for police and 29% for government officials.

The recent report of the Transparency International also improved Pakistan’s ranking in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 126 to 116, which is a great achievement for Pakistan.

In addition, the World Economic Forum and Mishal Pakistan also improved country’s ranking from 126 to 122. “All these rankings point to the efforts made by the NAB,” he boasted.

He said that NAB has devised Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to rationalise the workload and timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases.

He said that NAB is committed to eradicating corruption from the country by adopting Zero Tolerance Policy for corruption-free Pakistan.

He said that NAB’s Anti-corruption strategy proved very successful which will be continued in 2017 owing to its effectiveness.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2017.