KARACHI: Rs200bn lost annually to corruption: NAB chief
KARACHI, March 14: Governor Sindh Muhammedmian Soomro advocated on Thursday a fair and reasonable wage with appropriate facilities like shelter, health, education and security at the time of retirement for low-paid employees, besides curtailment in discretionary powers of officials to combat corruption.
“Low pay, discretionary powers and weak control lead to corrupt behaviour,” he observed while addressing the inaugural session of a workshop on “ National Anti Corruption Strategy” organized by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) at the National Institute of Public Administration, Karachi.
“Corruption is not a disease that prevails in the public sector alone, but it is a virus that has infected the entire society,” the governor Soomro said, adding that the costs of corruption encompassed the economic, social and political spheres.
He said corrupt practices in the government created economic inefficiency, caused a breakdown of trust, eroded public confidence in the government and undermined the rule of law.
As corruption spread, he said, public officials and citizens alike wasted their energies pursuing illicit gains. He noted that even honest citizens and functionaries were forced to go corrupt in order to get by as they had little or no chance left.
Moreover, he observed, corruption generally reallocated resources to the rich and powerful, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor; this in turn bred popular alienation and cynicism leading to instability.
The governor said that in societies where democratic structures were nascent or weak, endemic corruption threatened the entire working of the state itself. He referred to the post- communist Russia where the mix of corruption and organized crime had jeopardized its transition to a free market democracy.
“Corruption in administration drains the exchequer of vital revenue, provides an incentive for corrupt officials to create scarcity, increases red tape and delays. All this often culminates in a reputation that drives investment away,” he said.
Accountability, the governor said, was an administrative process, a technique of control and a positive democratic virtue meriting further development in the government institutions and agencies. He emphasized rigid adherence to the prescribed procedure in administering. However, he opined that the deterrence should be fair and judicious.
He also stressed self-regulation, regulating and correcting through legal means and remedies, correct administrative action by citizens, political parties and public opinion, enhancing financial prudence and making the bureaucracy accountable to public representatives in public dealings and management of public funds.
“In a democratic welfare state, the district administrative functionaries should not only share authority but should also be accountable to the public through their local representatives. Moreover, the local administrative authority should not be concentrated in the hands of one or a few local administrative officers,” the governor said.
Earlier in his welcome address, chairman National Accountability Bureau, Lt-Gen Munir Hafiez, observed that corruption was a direct consequence of poor governance and sustainable good governance was inconceivable in a corruption- prone environment. “Corruption undermines investment and economic growth, decreases the resources available for human development goals, deepens the extent of poverty, subverts the judicial system and undermines the legitimacy of the state. The systemic corruption trap devastates the entire economic, political and social fabric of a country, but God has saved Pakistan from this worst situation”, he said.
“Throughout the fifties the bulk of corruption remained at low level, though a highly regularized economic system sowed the seeds middle-level corruption.”
Brig Shujaat Zameer Dar, project director NACS, also addressed the workshop on the goals of the project and said its purpose was to define a framework for effective prevention and combating of corruption.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by provincial ministers Ali Mir Shah and Dewan Yousuf Farooqui, chief secretary Javed ashraf Hussain, secretaries of different government departments, the Naib Nazim city government Karachi, town Nazims and others. — PPI
