ISLAMABAD: Corruption is mother of all evils, according to Qamar Zaman Chaudhry. He said it badly affected the state of the economy, standard of living and social justice.
He was speaking as the chief guest at a National Seminar on “Role of youth in eradication of corruption” organized by Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU). Chauhdry said if a country wants to achieve sustained socio economic development with healthy foreign investment, corruption must be eliminated at all costs. He maintained that the ill effects of the menace of corruption have become one of the greatest challenges that every country is confronted with.
More developed countries have managed to reduce its scope to a minimum level through sustainable measures like building infrastructure but it is quite rampant in developing countries, he added. “This is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand and I hope that we will take adequate measures as soon as it is possible for this assembly to do so.”
He said that corruption in any society was inversely proportional to good governance. “If you look at any of the great human civilizations, you will see that mostly they did not fail simply due to external forces but because of internal weaknesses and corruption. Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals are essential,” he added.
He said that as head of Pakistan’s apex anti-corruption agency, it was important for him to share the organisation’s efforts for eradication of corruption. He said that in the anti-corruption efforts, prevention regime is another effective tool to combat corruption and misuse of authority at an early stage before it happens. NAB is mandated under section 33C of NAO form Prevention Committees for suggesting amendments in rules and regulation, in order to prevent corruption and corrupt practices in government departments.
These prevention committees are mainly constituted for government, ministries and departments who have more frequent contact and dealings with common people. Cooperatives and police departments also fall in this category. The prevention committees consist of senior officers of government, experts in the field, eminent citizens and NAB. He said that Prevention committees have been established at NAB Headquarter and regional NAB’s. Recommendations of various prevention committees on finalization are forwarded to quarters concerned for implementation.
He said that NAB is closely working with M/o Federal Education for incorporating Anti-Corruption theme in the Curriculum. We have also signed a Memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan. Under the MoU, NAB and HEC will make joint efforts in sensitising the youth in Universities against corruption.
Earlier, Javed Ashraf, Vice Chancellor, QAU highlighted the performance of QAU which led towards it becoming the number one university of the country.
