ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry on Tuesday said corruption in the government spending put negative impact on development programmes and resulted in perpetual increase in 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 source for further acts of corruption,” he said addressing a ceremony organized at Police College Sihala in Islamabad to congratulate all the newly inducted officers of NAB.
“There is no shortcut to hard work. NAB accords high priority to training of its investigation officers (IOs) and prosecutors,” he said, adding that NAB selected best out of the best officers and not a single ‘safarish’ or aberration occurred in the entire process of selection.
Chaudhry said NAB firmly believed that all those selected on merit would be able to do justice to their national duty to eradicate corruption.
Qamar Zaman Chaudhry welcomed the IOs at start of their training session for 8th Investigator’s Basic Induction Course-(IBIC)-VIII at Police Training College Sihala.
“It was a very competitive process and to maintain transparency and fair play the selection process was out-sourced to National Testing Service (NTS), which conducted academic as well as psychological tests,” he said and added 94,165 applications were received in response to advertisement. Of the total, 80,377 candidates were shortlisted for 97 posts. It was a gigantic task to select the best out of this huge lot.
The NAB Chairman said NAB was essentially a complaint driven organization and added an exhaustive system of cognizance of cases had been formulated to standardize selection of cases for processing.
“Priority is assigned keeping in view case nature, the amount of money involved, the social impact and number of affectees,” he said and added that the top most priority was accorded to corruption complaints against NAB’s own officials.
Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said NAB personnel followed a strict code of ethics and conduct as a zero tolerance against corruption was strictly enforced.
Since its creation, he said, NAB had adopted the enforcement based approach in fight against corruption. Irrespective of their status and social standing, the Bureau had investigated and prosecuted the corrupt. The NAB accorded high priority to cases of cheating public at large which was a serious offence under NAO, he added.
Chaudhry said many financial scams involving plundering hard earned income and savings of people at large had been pursued by the NAB, with a goal to recover looted money and return the same to rightful owners.
Double Shah Scam, Cooperative Societies Scam, Fake Housing Authorities Scam & Modarabas, he said, were only a few to be named. Overall results of enforcement drive had been very positive.
The Chairman said prosecution of cases in courts of law had shown highly satisfactory results and for year 2016, the overall conviction rate had been at 76 per cent.
The NAB Chairman said the world over, anti-corruption agencies were laying greater emphasis on awareness and prevention.
“We have also started a process of reforms to energize existing accountability system to improve efficiency in all spheres of Bureau’s working from awareness and prevention to enforcement and prosecution.”
“The prevention committees formed by the NAB assist, advise and guide the regulators in their efforts of bringing good governance through internal control, accountability, withdrawal of discretionary powers, ensuring transparency, fair play and meritocracy while NGOs, Media and Corporate sector are involved in developing awareness and publicity material.”
Moreover, he said Character Building Societies (CBS) were being set up in educational institutions across the country to build an edifice against corruption.
Qamar Zaman said the NAB was now acknowledged as an excellent professional outfit.
The Chairman said that NAB had chalked out a comprehensive training plan which was spread over a period of approximately five months.
“In absence of NAB’s own academy, we requested the training facilities of Police College Sihala. In this regard, we are thankful to Inspector General of Police Punjab and Commandant Police Training College Sihala to provide a supportive environment for training.”
The Chairman NAB said there was no shortcut to hard work and asked the IOs to make full use of this opportunity of training and work hard.
Source: APP/DND
