ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Lt-Gen Munir Hafiez on Monday said corruption was the biggest obstacle in the way of development and well-being of the people.
Inaugurating NAB’s second investigation officers’ course, he said: “Our inability to fight corruption in the past has resulted in the failure of the development efforts. On the other side, poverty, illiteracy and injustice have continued to plague our society.”
Emphasising the complexity of financial crimes, the NAB chief urged young investigation officers to focus on acquiring high degree of relevant skill and education in order to be able to successfully carry out the sophisticated task of investigation.
“What you have entered is not routine investigation work, it is an extremely sophisticated work which requires a high degree of skill and relevant education,” he said.
The NAB chairman said the struggle to fight corruption was the struggle to create an equitable society where fundamental rights of the individual were not denied, where human dignity was preserved and where every individual had a right to move up in life.
Referring to the importance of competence and honesty in the anti-corruption drive, he said NAB wanted to ensure that its officials were professional, dedicated and endowed with a high degree of honesty and integrity. “It is against these qualities that we assess our young trainee officers,” he maintained.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by a large number of senior officials of NAB and other departments and organizations.
The first course of NAB’s investigators had commenced in January. After successful completion of their initial training, the 27 graduating officers have joined the mainstream work with regional bureaus.
The courses are aimed at training a regular cadre of officers who in years to come would form the core of anti- corruption efforts in Pakistan.
The growing complexity of corruption and financial crime has put great demands on efforts to curb them, a NAB spokesman said.
He said the training course was designed to give the young minds an introduction to modern crime-fighting techniques.
“These courses are the first of their kind in the country and are already bearing results in the form of dedicated and trained manpower available to NAB,” he said.
The present course has 29 trainee officers who have been selected through a most demanding, fair and transparent system. All of them hold postgraduate degrees in relevant disciplines.
They would be trained in two major streams of disciplines — law and finance. The overall training spans over six months and is divided into four modules.
Specialised subjects, like criminology, organization and working of govt departments, financial rules, investigation techniques, forensic auditing, psychology, banking would be taught during the course.