Performance review: NAB urges law to protect whistleblowers

Highlights various other measures taken to strengthen accountability

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has chalked out a comprehensive National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) for eradication of corruption and corrupt practices throughout the country, said a press release here on Sunday.

The bureau had proposed to the law ministry to draft ‘Whistle Blowing Protection Act’. Under the UN Convention Against Corruption, legislation on whistle blowing is an obligation on Pakistan. The prime minister has approved Whistle Blower Protection Bill which has been sent to Cabinet Division for further action.

NAB has developed monitoring and evaluation system catering the needs of all concerned having salient features of maintenance of data at each stage including  complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record preservation of Regional Board Meetings and Executive Board Meetings including case brief, decisions made and list of participants attended the meeting with time & date and setting up of an effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System and ability to analyze data in qualitative and quantitative form having warnings and alarms system for violators.



NAB has devised Internal Accountability Mechanism (IAM) within NAB with a view to weed out such elements that for reasons of inefficiency, misconduct, malpractice and violation of laid down SOPs/Rules and bring a bad name to the organization. Chairman NAB has directed Senior Member Chairman Inspection and Monitoring Team (CI&MT) to issue policy guidelines to all Regional Bureaus of NAB for implementation and application.

On the directions of chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, NAB’s newly recruited 110 investigation officers are being trained at the Police Training College Sihala. NAB has also planned establishment of an academy at Islamabad on the pattern of Malaysian Anti-Corruption Academy for capacity building of its officers.

The bureau has prosecuted corrupt elements and recovered over Rs4.5 billion of looted public money in the last one year bringing the total recovery to date to Rs264.4 billion. The allocation to NAB for its working since creation is Rs11.8 billion, which is only 4.4% of recoveries made by NAB. The numbers of applications received in 2014 were 40,077 which is double the number of 19,900 received in 2013. The increase in applications to NAB is reflective of people’s confidence in our work, the news release said.

NAB has filed six references in the Rs22 billion Modarba Scam and recovered Rs1.73 billion from Modaraba Scam besides properties and vehicles. NAB has so arrested 32 accused persons in this case.

NAB has also filed 8 references in Rental Power Project cases in the respective Accountability Courts.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2015.