ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry said on Thursday that NAB was committed to working with absolute professionalism for the eradication of corruption.
He was chairing a fortnightly meeting to review the latest progress on the NAB’s Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) at NAB Headquarters.
During the meeting, the adviser to chairman briefed the committee about the progress on the working of Monitoring and Evaluation System in NAB and its efficacy in future.
The meeting was informed that NAB had developed an effective Monitoring and Evaluation System, having salient features of maintenance of data at each stage, including complaint entry, complaint verification, inquiry, investigation, prosecution stage and record proceedings of regional board meetings and executive board meetings, including case brief, decisions made. It also has the ability to analyze data in qualitative and quantitative terms, having warnings and alarms system for violators.
The NAB chairman said that monitoring and evaluation System in NAB was to track implementation and outputs systematically, and measure the effectiveness of performance which helped in enhancing the operational, monitoring and evaluation capabilities of NAB.
He said that Monitoring and Evaluation System provided the necessary data to guide strategic planning and helped improve performance and achieve results to improve current and future management of outputs, outcomes and impact.
“The Monitoring and Evaluation System (MES) is an important management tool to track progress. It facilitates decision-making as well as establish links between the past, present and future actions,” he said.
He directed officials to implement the decisions to further improve institutionalising the support and supervision at various levels of management in NAB. He directed the adviser to implement the system in all the regional bureaus and at NAB Headquarters.
“During the last 16 years, NAB has received about 326,694 complaints from individuals and private/public organisations. During this period, NAB authorised 10,992 complaint verifications, 7,303 inquiries, 3,648 investigations, filed 2,667 corruption references in respective accountability courts. The overall conviction ratio is about 76 percent. NAB’s prime focus is on cases of cheating the public at large by fraudulent financial companies, bank frauds, willful bank loan defaults, misuse of authority and embezzlement of state funds by government servants. Since NAB’s inception, one of NAB’s major achievements has been the recovery of around Rs 287 billion of ill-gotten money, which was deposited in the national exchequer,” he said.
He said that the figures of complaints, inquiries and investigations had almost doubled as compared to the same period of 2015 to 2016. “The comparative figures for the latest two years are indicative of the hard work being put in by all ranks of NAB staff in an atmosphere of renewed energy and dynamism, where the fight against corruption is being taken as a national duty. Increase in the number of complaints also reflects enhanced public trust in NAB. PILDAT, in its report, supports the position stated above as 42 percent people trusted NAB against 30 percent for police and 29 percent for government officials. The recent report of Transparency International also rated Pakistan in Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 126 to 116 which is a great achievement for Pakistan due to NAB’s efforts. The World Economic Forum and Mishal Pakistan, according to Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum, rated Pakistan from 126 to 122 this year which is great achievement of Pakistan due to NAB efforts,” he said.
He said that NAB had rationalised its operational workload. “Timelines have been prescribed for efficient, effective and expeditious disposal of cases putting a maximum limit of 10 months from complaint verification to inquiry and finally to a reference in the accountability court,” he said.
Published in Daily Times, August 4th 2017.
