ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, Justice Javed Iqbal, on Friday presided over a meeting to review awareness and prevention strategy. The meeting was attended by Hussain Asghar, deputy chairman, NAB, Syed Asghar Haider, prosecutor general accountability (PGA), Zahir Shah, DG operations and other senior officers of NAB here.
The NAB chairman said that NAB’s awareness strategy has been appreciated by the World Economic Forum and Transparency International Pakistan in order to aware people about the ill effects of corruption which was an honor for Pakistan.
The NAB chairman said NAB is mandated to carry out awareness and prevention functions against corruption in pursuance of Section 33-C of National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999. He said that NAB’s awareness and prevention strategy remained very successful in 2019 in order to aware people about the ill effects of corruption.
According to the chairman , NAB has been engaging different governmental, non-governmental organizations, media, civil society and other segments of society to join hands with NAB’s awareness and prevention efforts in order to aware 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 that the present management of NAB has taken various measures to check corruption and to nab corrupt elements, proclaimed offenders and absconders.
During the last two years, NAB has recovered Rs. 363 billion through direct and indirect from corrupt elements and deposited in the national exchequer. The recovery made by NAB was then returned to thousands of effectees and some government departments considering eradication of corruption as their national service. He said that NAB’s top most priority is the logical conclusion of mega corruption cases by adopting “Accountability for All” policy to eradicate corruption from Pakistan by using all its resources. He said that due to NAB’s proactive awareness and prevention strategy, reports and surveys of different reputable national and international organizations like PILDAT, Mishal Pakistan, Transparency International, World Economic Forum and Gallup and Gilani survey in which 59 percent people have shown their confidence on NAB’s performance, testifies people’s confidence and trust of people upon NAB’s performance across the board as per law. NAB has not only opened its door for citizens related to their corruption related complaints but received almost double complaints in last year in 2020 related to corruption as compared to the previous year. He said that NAB has established Prevention Committees throughout the country in order to identify loopholes and suggest ways and means in consultation with concerned departments to ease out their service delivery systems in order to address the problems of people at large which proved very successful in identifying loopholes and thus their solutions with consultation. Due to NAB’s efforts and coordination with various public government departments, service delivery especially one window operations of CDA and ICT are being improved gradually.
The NAB chairman said youth is our future. In order to aware youth about the ill effects of corruption, NAB had signed a MoU with HEC to create awareness among students against corruption as youth is not only our future but also considered a vanguard in this fight.
The concept of establishment of Character Building Societies (CBS) in Universities/colleges proved excellent and very successful and more than 50 thousands CCBS in Universities/Colleges have been regularly conducting their meeting of CCBS in order to aware their university/college fellows about the ill effects of corruption at an early age that’s why the nation is now more aware that corruption is mother of all evils and it should be nabbed now with iron hands. Honorable Mr. Justice Javed Iqbal, Chairman NAB has reiterated his firm resolve to eradicate corruption from the country and hoped that collected efforts of all stakeholders could materialize the dream of corruption free Pakistan into reality.