LAHORE, Aug 18: The Anti-Corruption Establishment, Punjab, (ACE) will soon be given autonomous status, it is learnt.

Sources said on Monday the ACE staff and budget would be doubled, enabling it to handle high-profile cases and to keep a vigil on the financial matters of the district governments.

The role of the ACE was being extended to reduce the burden of corruption cases on the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the province.

A summary has been forwarded to Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi in this regard last month and the ACE is likely to get autonomous status in near future, sources said.

The chief minister has upgraded the post of the ACE chief as director-general. Brig Aslam Ghuman (retired) has assumed the office of the ACE director-general last month.

Official sources said that the ACE was being given autonomous status to minimize the role of the NAB in the Punjab to an advisory body.

After autonomy, the ACE director-general would have the powers of an administrative secretary and would be answerable only to the chief minister.

Sources said that in fact the chief minister wanted to enable ACE to deal with corruption cases involving ‘big fish’. It would, however, continue to handle low-profile cases as well.

They said the chief minister also wanted the ACE to monitor the financial matters of the district governments which were not checked by any government agency since their establishment in August 2001.

At present, the ACE has a strength of 700 employees which include six additional directors, 30 deputy directors, 70 assistant directors, 40 inspectors. Its 15 employees — two deputy directors and 13 assistant directors — are working with the NAB on deputation. It has a budget of Rs80 million.

Of the 300 applications the NAB receives daily, most are against the police and the revenue departments. It has four circle offices in the province. Lahore division office covers Kasur, Okara and Sheikhupura districts; Rawalpindi division handles the cases from Jhelum, Attock, Chakwal, Mandi Bahauddin and Gujrat districts; Faisalabad division covers Sargodha, Khushab, Mianwali and Toba Tek Singh districts; Multan division deals with the cases of corruption of 13 districts including Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar and Dera Ghazi Khan.

Under the new autonomous setup, one director-general and one additional director-general, eight additional directors, 60 deputy directors, 140 assistants directors and 1,400 other employees would be recruited.

Two new divisional offices would also be set up in Bahawalpur and Sargodha.

The ACE staff working with the NAB would be repatriated to it after the autonomy. It has also been proposed to establish a vigilance wing to monitor the activities of the ACE staff. It would be headed by a deputy director.

Sources said the establishment of a vigilance wing was inevitable as a number of the ACE employees involved in corruption often got scot-free. They said the new wing would help them bring into the net.

Another proposal to establish a special wing to deal with the specified cases was also under consideration. All record of the ACE was also being computerized at a cost of Rs15 million which would help remove difficulties in proceeding the cases.