LAHORE: A new law is being made to give fangs to the Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment to enable it to adopt the latest methods of curbing graft, official sources informed Dawn on Saturday.

The ACE is governed by the Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment Ordinance, 1961 which, officials say, has become redundant.

Under the new legal framework, it would be renamed as the Anti-corruption Agency, officials said.

They said it was being discussed to give dedicated human resource to the new agency. At present police officials and those from the provincial service are posted in the ACE on deputation.

But, the officials said, the old human resource had proved highly unfit for curbing corruption. Instead, the corrupt among the ACE officials opened avenues through which corruption cases were resolved through corrupt means, they added.

They said the agency would be designed with the purpose of controlling corruption at all tiers of the provincial government, spreading its influence all over the province.

Meanwhile, the officials said the federal government had clarified that all its employees working in the provincial governments could be arrested or investigated by the ACE on charges of corruption.

The federal government civil servants working in federal offices within Punjab were out of the jurisdiction of the ACE. FIA is the relevant authority for them, they said.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2019