NAB awareness strategy lauded by WEF, TI: chairman

ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal Friday reiterated his firm resolve to eradicate corruption from the country and hoped that collective efforts of all stakeholders could turn the dream of a corruption-free Pakistan into a reality.

“NAB’s awareness strategy has been appreciated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Transparency International Pakistan (TIP), which is aimed at creating awareness among people about the ill-effects of corruption.

Their appreciation is an honour for Pakistan,” he said while chairing a meeting to review awareness and prevention strategy of NAB on Friday. The meeting was attended by NAB Deputy Chairman Hussain Asghar, Prosecutor General Accountability (PGA) Syed Asghar Haider, DG Operations NAB Zahir Shah and other senior officers of the Bureau at the NAB Headquarters.

Justice Javed Iqbal said NAB was mandated to carry out awareness and prevention functions against corruption in pursuance of Section 33-C of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999.

He said NAB’s awareness and prevention strategy remained very successful in 2019 for creating awareness among people about the ill-effects of corruption.

Under NAB’s awareness and prevention strategy, he said NAB had been engaging different governmental, non-governmental organisations, media, civil society and other segments of society to join hands with NAB’s awareness and prevention efforts in order to create awareness among people especially students in universities/ colleges at an early age.

He said as per the positive feedback received from various segments of society, NAB’s awareness and prevention efforts have been effectively highlighted by NAB’s media wing free of cost in print, electronic and social media throughout the country which has been appreciated by all segments of society.

He said the present NAB management has taken various measures to check corruption and to nab corrupt elements, proclaimed offenders and absconders.

During the last two years, the NAB chairman said the Bureau recovered Rs363 billion through direct and indirect methods from the corrupt elements and deposited in the national exchequer. “The recovery made by NAB was then returned to thousands of affectees and some government departments, considering eradication of corruption as their national service,” he said.

He said NAB’s topmost priority is logical conclusion of mega corruption cases by adopting “Accountability for All” policy to eradicate corruption from Pakistan by using all its resources.

He said due to NAB’s proactive awareness and prevention strategy, reports and surveys of different reputable national and international organisations like PILDAT, Mishal Pakistan, Transparency International, World Economic Forum and Gallup and Gilani survey in which 59 per cent people have shown their confidence in NAB performance, testifies people's confidence and trust of people in NAB performance across the board as per law.

The NAB chairman said the Bureau received almost double complaints in 2020 related to corruption compared to the previous year. He said NAB had established prevention committees throughout the country in order to identify loopholes and suggest ways and means in consultation with the departments concerned to ease out their service delivery systems in order to address the problems of people at large.

He said due to NAB’s efforts and coordination with various public government departments, service delivery especially one window operations of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) are being improved gradually.

Justice Javed Iqbal said NAB had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to create awareness among students against corruption.

He said the concept of establishment of character building societies (CBS) in universities/ colleges proved very successful and more than 50,000 CBSs in universities/ colleges have regularly been conducting meetings to create awareness among students about ill-effects of corruption.