ACE fails to act against its own

LAHORE: The director-general (DG) of the Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE), Punjab, has not taken any action against officials who failed to meet the Nov 3 deadline set by him to clear the agency’s backlog.

Kazim Ali Malik, a retired PCO judge, was appointed in October 2009 as the ACE DG on contract basis in relaxation of the Re-Employment Policy of 2003 and the Contract Appointment Policy of 2004. Malik was to improve the performance of the ACE.

He transferred more than 800 ongoing inquiries and registered cases from the ACE headquarters to the regional offices, reasoning that the DG’s office was meant for supervisory and monitoring tasks. The regional directors were asked to conclude the pending cases till Nov 3. The DG warned that those who failed to meet the deadline would be held accountable.

An ACE official said that when Malik took charge as DG about 70 per cent of the inquiries and cases registered with the ACE were pending with the eight regional offices and the directorate. He held the non-professional attitude of the investigation officers responsible for the huge backlog.

According to the data available with The Express Tribune, the ACE had to complete 19,667 inquiries last year. Out of these 15,264 were initiated during 2009 while 4,403 were carried over from 2008. Today, 3,600 of the inquiries are pending.

The Police Department topped the list with 910 inquiries lodged against it awaiting completion.

The Local Government and the Revenue departments, with 629 and 604, were second and third.

The figure for corruption cases lodged before the courts stood at 3,714, out of which, 2,721were registered in 2009 and 993 were carried over from the previous year.

At present, 1,245 cases are still pending for prosecution of which 297 were filed against the Revenue Department, 254 against the Police and 199 against the Local Government.

The large number of pending cases suggests that the ACE was helpless in acting against the influential officials.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Kazim Ali Malik said that a large number of cases had been disposed of. He said that most of the current backlog consisted of cases about development projects which required technical evidence in order to reach a conclusion.  He added that the ACE did not have a laboratory of its own so it has to refer such cases to the engineering universities.

Malik said that some of the cases were pending owing to the non-cooperative attitude of the complainants and the accused.

He said that he had directed the regional offices to conclude the cases on the basis of available facts, in case both parties continue ignoring the directives.  The ACE is run by a brigade of 275 officers ranging form BS-16 to BS-21.

Besides, the DG (in BS-21), it has an additional director general (in BS-20), 11 directors (in BS-19), 63 deputy directors (in BS-18), seven administrative officers (in BS-17), 129 assistant directors (in BS-17) and eight divisional accountants, 44 inspectors and 10 superintendents (in BS-16).

Published in the Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2010.