LAHORE: The new campaign against the corrupt element (National Anti-Corruption Strategy) is very effective and yielding positive results and will continue the ongoing calendar year.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said this, while addressing officers during his visit to NAB Lahore Bureau to review its performance on the basis of Quantified Grading System.
The NAB chief said the Planning Commission of Pakistan had included a chapter devoted to issues of corruption in the 11th five year plan and: “We intend to work closely with the Planning Commission to achieve goals set in the 11th five years plan.”
He said that the corruption was on decline in Pakistan as the Transparency International had placed it nine positions better as compared to previous year since the country improved the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score.
The chairman said the NAB had prosecuted corrupts and recovered approximately Rs 266 billion since its inception and deposited in the national exchequer which was a record achievement. He said NAB had received 300,209 applications, authorized 6,662 inquiries, authorized 3,391 investigations and filed 2,451 corruption references in respective accountability courts since its inception, adding that various initiatives have been taken to further improve the performance of NAB.
Qamar said the NAB had devised new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to rationalize the workload and timelines for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months from complaint- verification-to-inquiry-to-investigation and finally to a reference in an accountability court.
In order to ensure uniformity and standardisation, standard operating procedures (SOPs) for investigation officers were reviewed and revised after a gap of 10 years in order to benefit from experience and collective wisdom of senior supervisory officers, a system of CIT comprising of director, additional director, investigation officer and a senior legal counsel had been put in place.
“This will not only lend quality to the work but also ensure that no single individual could influence the proceedings,” he said.
The NAB chief said last year the National Accountability Bureau had devised a comprehensive Quantified Grading System in NAB to review annual performance of its regional bureaus and further improve performance of its officers/officials. Under this grading system, Regional Bureau’s performance (Operational Efficiency Index (OEI) was being evaluated at a given criteria as 80% marks will be considered ‘Outstanding/Excellent’, marks between 60% to 79% will be considered as ‘Very Good’, marks between 40% to 49% will be considered as ‘Good’, while marks less than 40% will be considered as ‘Below Average’.
He said annual inspection of NAB Lahore had been completed and CI&MT team had graded NAB Lahore’s performance as Outstanding/Excellent with 89.24 Operational Efficiency Index (OEI). He added that the NAB had an effective developed Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System having salient features of maintenance of data at each stage, including complaint entry, 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.
Qamar said to create awareness against ill effects of corruption among the youth of Pakistan, the NAB in collaboration with the HEC signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and over 10,000 character building societies (CBSs) had been established by NAB in universities and colleges.
Appreciating performance of officers, the chairman said good quality of work come to his review during annual inspection report 2015 which showed that the Nab had achieved positive results by putting untiring efforts. He advised officers to carry out these results more vigorously in future by utilizing their resources, capabilities and skills besides striving hard to achieve common goals rather personal interests.
