ISLAMABAD: Two regional offices of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) will start functioning in Multan and Sukkur in the first week of December, officials said.

Fourteen senior officials have been transferred to Multan and Sukkur from NAB’s five regional offices and the headquarters to run the new offices.

“Two new regional offices are being established in view of increasing number of complaints about corruption being received by the bureau,” a NAB spokesperson told Dawn on Sunday.

He said the number of complaints received by NAB this year had doubled.

“This year we received 2,000 complaints against 1,000 submitted last year,” he said.

The official said people of Sukkur and Multan and nearby areas had to go to NAB’s Karachi and Lahore offices to lodge their complaints, adding it not created difficulties for them but also increased workload on NAB’s offices in those cities.

“That’s why the need for new regional offices was felt,” the spokesperson said.

According to a NAB decision, seven officers each have been posted to Multan and Sukkur regional offices.

Atiqur Rehman, director; Ahmad Mumtaz Bajwa, additional director; Malik Waheed Ahmad, deputy director; Zaheer Iqbal Bhatti, deputy director; Mohammad Shahid, assistant director, and Mohammad Habibullah, investigation officer, have been transferred from Lahore office to Multan. Mohammad Ilyas Qamar, additional director, has been transferred from NAB’s Rawalpindi office to Multan.

Fayyaz Ahmad Qureshi, director; Mohammad Rafiq Memon, additional director; Nadeem Ahmad Sheikh, deputy director; Samar Hussain Qadri, deputy director; and Kashif Noor, assistant director, have been transferred from Karachi to Sukkur. Qasim Gurchani, investigation officer, has been transferred from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Abdul Khaliq, additional director, from Rawalpindi to Sukkur office.

The decision to form two new regional offices was taken at a conference of NAB’s director generals held in September.

The spokesperson said the decision to set up new offices was part of NAB’s expansion plan for eradication of corruption and better monitoring of its activities in the country.

He said it had also been decided to set up an `anti-corruption training academy’ on the pattern of the National Anti-Corruption Academy of Malaysia to enhance knowledge and working capacity of the bureau’s officers.

Published in Dawn, December 1st , 2014