NAB lays off 162 FIA personnel

[LRE]

NAB lays off 162 FIA personnel



Thursday, November 06, 2008
By Dilshad Azeem

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), in the latest downsizing move following serious financial crunch, has laid off all the 162 FIA personnel after sending back 508 officers and low-grade employees from the armed forces since the change of government at the centre.

At the same time, the NAB once a high-profile department may not be able to pay salaries to the existing staff on Dec 1, 2008 in case it does not get supplementary grant from the federal government apart from the routine budgetary allocations, official sources told The News here on Wednesday.

“Despite all this, the NAB will continue to stay as per commitment of the Government of Pakistan in the last year’s UN Convention against Corruption, but change of its name with limited operations cannot be ruled out,” the sources said. When contacted, NAB Chairman Naveed Ahsan confirmed to have sent back 164 FIA officers and lower staff members a few days back.

They were working in the bureau since 2002. “At present, we have neither serving armed forces personnel nor of the FIA, who all have been sent back,” he said. However, he admitted that retired officers from the armed forces and some other departments were still with the NAB like in other government departments.

“Now there are civilians working with the department after we sent back 508 officers and low-grade employees from Army, Air Force and Navy and recently the FIA personnel,” he illustrated.

The NAB chairman claimed that the existing strength of the bureau stood at 400 officers and 1,000 employees, who mostly hail from other government departments inducted on deputation. “Definitely, we have problem in funds but these employees are a liability for the government which has to pay them salaries,” he noted.

Ahsan maintained that these employees had arrangements with the Government of Pakistan and not with the NAB and, therefore, the government would have to make arrangements for their salaries through the bureau or through their parent departments.

When asked about transfer of powers from the NAB to the FIA, hesaid a committee headed by Law Minister Farooq Naek had already been set up by the government to decide about the issue of powers and how much of NAB’s strength was to be maintained.

On the budget issue, the chairman said the Finance Ministry was yet to respond to the NAB about the release of supplementary grant for which it had been approached last month.The NAB had sought Rs130 million (additional) supplementary grant just after four or five months of the beginning of the current financial year as a result of the huge cut in its budget and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s announcement to abolish the bureau.

The NAB, besides cutting down its size, has transferred almost 35-40 per cent of minor nature cases to the provincial anti-corruption departments to lessen the financial burden. The bureau sought a total of Rs 950 million as regular grant for the year 2008-09, of which the government (parliament) had approved only Rs 470 million in the June budget, almost a 48 per cent cut. An amount of Rs 150 million was released in the first quarter and the same amount for the second quarter.The NAB, according to its chairman, is now dealing with only mega corruption cases.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=145110