VIENNA: NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, has said that corruption is the main cause of all evils and it not only undermines development of any country but also deprives people from their due rights.
While addressing at UNCAC Conference on “Prevention of Corruption” held in Vienna, he said that considering these facts, NAB was established as Pakistan’s top anti-corruption organization which is assigned with the responsibility of eliminating corruption through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement.
He said that the Government of Pakistan realised the importance of Information Technology in prevention of corruption and established the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT).
MoIT is the national focal ministry dedicated to planning, coordinating and execution of Information Technology and Telecommunications programs in the country. MoIT has eight Regulatory Authorities and Institutions under its administrative control. He said that E-Governance is an important step to check corruption in order to digitise the connection between public officials and communities.
He said that an ICT based Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) in NAB was introduced due to which all functions of Operations Division have been automated. The software has inbuilt Executive Dash Board functions which reflects day to day work right up to field level. These efforts have been acknowledged by the international community and it improved Pakistan’s Global Ranking in ICT.
The Chairman NAB said that in order to control the menace of corruption, the government has adopted preventive measures with the help of ICT and has introduced Information Technology to bring transparency and to minimise the chances of corruption. He said that introduction of ICT in important government organizations has greatly helped with transparency and merit.
He also said that NAB is essentially a complaint driven organization which was established to eradicate corruption. NAB had chalked out a very comprehensive operational methodology for complaint verification, inquiry and investigation. NAB’s investigators strictly follow the Code of Conduct and Zero Tolerance Policy on the basis of evidence as per law.
He said that NAB has recovered Rs. 277.909 billion since its inception and NAB has received a total of 3, 21,318 complaints which were all disposed off according to law. NAB has authorised 7124 inquiries, 3616 investigation and filed 2610 in the respective Accountability Courts. NAB’s performance is a record achievement which is better than any investigation agency of the world and due to this, Transparency International has rated Pakistan 126 to 117 in 2015.
