ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has recovered Rs 265.977 billion looted public money since its inception through prosecution of corrupts.
This was revealed by NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, while chairing a meeting held here to review overall performance of the Bureau at its headquarters on Monday.
“This is a great achievement. The allocation to NAB for its working since creation is Rs 10.111 billion which is only 3.7 % of recoveries made by NAB,” he said.
The chairman said during 2015, the NAB recovered Rs 4.5 billion of looted money and it occurred only due to efforts and systematic and gradual improvements that the NAB has been brought back on rails by its present management. He said, “Increase in applications to the NAB is reflective of people’s confidence in our work,” adding that the litmus test of efficiency and effectiveness of NAB’s efforts lies in number of cases processed.
The NAB chief said in term of inquiries, NAB received 3,00,009 complaints since its inception and authorized 6662 and 3391 investigations. As regards, the corruption references filed in respective Accountability Courts, NAB filed 2,451 corruption references since its inception. The conviction rate of NAB is approximately 70 percent.
Qamar Zaman said the recent report of Transparency International (TI) for year 2015 rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 126 to 117 which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to NAB’s efforts.
“We have to redouble our efforts to come up to expectations associated with NAB but I must bring on record the hard work and commitment shown by all ranks of NAB officers/officials towards their national duty particularly in the last two years,” he added.
The NAB chairman said, “Youth is our future and NAB has decided to involve and sensitize them thorough its holistic and innovative approach of Awareness and Prevention.” He said NAB in collaboration with Higher Education Commission (HEC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) as over 10,000 Character Building Societies (CBSs) have been established by NAB in universities and colleges to create awareness against corruption.
He said the NAB has organized lectures, workshops, seminars, essay writing competitions, declamation contests, poster/painting competitions in educational institutions and organized awareness campaign throughout the country.
The chairman said present leadership of NAB has taken a number of measures to correcting the structural deficiencies, improving efficiency and create an enabling environment and recruited 110 investigation officers through NTS.
Besides, the Bureau introduced Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) and conducted about 400 refresher and capacity building training courses. Also introduced 10 months timelines for NAB operations, two months for complaint verification, four months for inquiry and four months for investigation, revision of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Quantified Grading System for objective performance evaluation, establishment of three Regional Bureaus at Multan, Sukkur and Gilgit-Baltistan, establishment of Forensic Science Laboratory, Internal Accountability Mechanism (IAM) and Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES).
Qamar said Monitoring and Evaluation System is an important management tool to track progress and it facilitates in decision making as well as establishes links between the past, present and future actions. He said the initiatives undertaken are bearing fruits and started yielding dividends resulting in optimal utilization of resources and improved efficiency. This has been acknowledged by independent monitoring agencies as well.
The NAB chief said the Bureau strongly believes in zero tolerance policy against corruption across the board as per law. “NAB hopes that joint efforts of all stakeholders can collaborate to check corruption and corrupt practices before happening with help of all stakeholders, civil society, media and people at large and bring sustainable systematic changes to governance structure of the country,” he added.
