PM asks bureaucrats not to fear NAB – Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday ordered senior bureaucrats to "deliver" and run the "risk" of making timely decisions without fearing the National Office of Responsibility (NAB).

While presiding over a meeting of federal secretaries and chief secretaries of the provinces, Khan expressed dissatisfaction with his performance and told them that it had been more than "a year since we came to power, but that we could not accomplish what people expected." .

The meeting took place almost a week after the secretaries met with the General of the Army General Staff (COAS), General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to express their reservations about the actions of the NAB.

Previously, a delegation of business magnates in a meeting with COAS had filed complaints against the NAB.

The Prime Minister on Establishment's adviser, Arbab Shahzad, said the secretaries shared their complaints with the prime minister against what they called "harassment" and "threatening" attitude of the NAB because government officials were reluctant to sign official files .

The bureaucrats also expressed concern about the trial in the media of senior officers by the NAB and other investigative authorities based on mere complaints against them.

Federal secretaries said that additional and joint secretaries were reluctant to make decisions due to fear of NAB actions. They cited the recent arrest of former secretary Usman Ghani by NAB a decade after his retirement.

At a meeting of the federal cabinet in recent months, a high-ranking bureaucrat had refused to sign the archive of a long-awaited railway project called Main Line-1 (ML-1) (laid out on a new railway line from Karachi to Peshawar ), which should be launched under the China-Pakistan economic corridor. Later, at another meeting, senior officials said they were not willing to start ML-1 and other projects for fear of NAB.

Prime Minister Khan assured the bureaucrats at Tuesday's meeting that he would resolve his complaints within a week or so, but that he would not tolerate his "go slow" approach. He hinted to amend the "controversial" laws of the NAB to provide a bold environment for bureaucrats and businessmen.

In a speech, the retired NAB president, Judge Javed Iqbal, had claimed that the anti-graft guard dog would not call any bureaucrat to work according to the book. "It's a propaganda that the bureaucracy has stopped working for fear of NAB," he said.

Posted in Dawn, November 6, 2019