ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has realised that it has failed to overcome pendency of cases, which has adversely affected the performance of the organisation.
According to a circular sent to the regional NAB authorities, the bureau’s chairman expressed unhappiness over non-disposal of pending cases and chalked out an action plan to address the issue.
“In a circular communicated to the regional NABs for strict compliance, concern has been raised that despite hard earned taxpayers’ money being spent on NAB, it has not been able to decrease the pendency rate, which depicts low productivity of the bureau,” the NAB spokesman said.
He said the NAB chief had ordered implementation of the action plan from the current month. “The objective of the action plan is to reduce the pendency rate of NAB cases at all stages, including inquiries, investigations and trials,” he added.
President Mamnoon Hussain also urged the NAB chairman to ‘do more’ when he presented the bureau’s annual report for 2013 last week. More than 300 cases of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen are pending with NAB.
NAB claimed on January 10 that it had reopened over 300 high-profile pending cases that had allegedly been dumped during the last government. However, no significant progress has been made in this regard.
These cases had remained unattended for the past four years due to different reasons and they were still in the inquiry or investigation stage, a NAB official said, adding that none of them had been sent to an accountability court.
According to NAB sources, the pending cases are against leaders of various parties, including Asif Zardari’s PPP, Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, Altaf Hussain’s MQM and Shujaat Hussain’s PML-Q.
“The NAB chief has taken serious view of increase in pendency at various stages of enforcement work and has directed all concerned to be more pro-active in this regard. On the directive of the chairman, the bureau has prepared an action plan for reduction of pending cases on a monthly basis,” the spokesman said.
According to the plan, the wings and regions concerned have been asked to re-prioritise workload of investigation officers on the basis of work done so far. The inquiries and investigations on which 80 percent or more work has been done will be concluded in a month. Internews
