KARACHI: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday announced a fresh inquiry against the Fazaia Housing Scheme regarding “allegation of cheating over 6,000” people after scores of affected persons protested at its Karachi headquarters.

The people’s protests went viral on social media and finally caught NAB’s attention, which now officially showed determination “to complete the inquiry at a fast pace and hold accountable all the persons involved”.

A brief statement issued by NAB-Karachi suggested that the move came from the top as authorities took notice of serious allegations against the scheme involving billions of rupees.

“The NAB-Karachi has requested the NAB chairman to initiate a fresh inquiry against the Fazaia Housing Scheme Karachi and others,” said the statement. “In view of a huge number of affectees, who have invested a [huge] amount of Rs13 billion, the NAB chairman has been requested to initiate the fresh inquiry on allegation of cheating over 6,000 people. NAB is determined to complete the inquiry at a fast pace and hold accountable all the persons involved.”

Though the NAB statement did not define “fast pace”, a spokesman for the bureau later told Dawn that the anti-graft body had formally taken up the task and would treat it the same way it had been taking up other cases of corruption and misappropriation of public money using all required channels and processes. “The inquiry has formally [been] initiated,” he said. “We received a number of complaints from different individuals and also have gathered information on our own that convinced the authorities to launch a formal inquiry.

Around 6,000 people have invested Rs13bn in the project

“The process is now open and we would take due course to complete the job. Under the defined rules, we invite or appeal to the people to cooperate with NAB to share any evidence or details relating to the inquiry.”

Dozens of people, including women and children, staged a protest demonstration at the Fazaia Housing Scheme office earlier this month. The event was widely highlighted on social media and users shared the footage of the protest and interviews of the protesters.

In one of the videos, the protesters were seen exchanging words with a man in uniform who while trying to pacify them shared a few details with regard to the progress made so far.

“It is unfortunate that we got involved with wrong, untrustworthy and shameless people,” he said while responding to the people’s demand for refund of their money.

When asked for the refund, the uniformed official told the protesters in the video that “your money is currently in a joint account”.

About the findings of any previous probe into the case since NAB claimed to have launched a ‘fresh’ inquiry, the spokesman said that the officials would consider every aspect while going through the process and make sure to protect people’s interest and money.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2019