ISLAMABAD - Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Justice ® Javed Iqbal has said that corruption is an evil that is defined as the dishonest or unethical method used by a person entrusted with a position or authority, for personal benefits.

“Corruption eats up the innocence of people belonging to all walks of life. If any country wants to achieve sustained socio-economic development with healthy foreign investments, corruption must be eliminated at all costs,” the chairman said this while chairing a meeting held at the NAB headquarters here yesterday to review performance of Awareness and Prevention Division especially the “Role of youth in eradication of corruption.”

According to a statement issued by the NAB headquarters here, the chairman said that in other words, corruption is when a person who is responsible for a task, and misuses that position for his own profit. Corruption includes bribery and embezzlement and has a greater impact on Pakistani economy, he said adding corruption is not only a root cause but badly affects the state of economy, standard of living and social justice.

He also said that the ill effects of the menace of corruption have become one of the major challenges that the country is confronted with. The more developed countries have managed in reducing its size and scope to a minimum level through sustainable measures like building infrastructure but it is quite rampant in developing countries. It is one of the major reasons for corruption in the society.

“In our own case, money laundering, corruption, misuse of authority, assets beyond known sources of income and cheating public at large are the main challenge. In fact, the nation was warned against this matter by the father of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the first ever address in the constituent assembly had said that one of the biggest curses is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand,” he said.

The Chairman said that the NAB has been consistently engaging all stakeholders in the fight against corruption in order to uproot this evil from Pakistani society. NAB works on a three-pronged strategy to weed out corruption. It consists of awareness/prevention and enforcement. He said that we have focused on awareness and prevention besides enforcement. NAB has taken lead in establishing a path way for effectively combating corruption in the system. Under the awareness regime, more than 50,000 character building societies (CBS) have been established in Universities and Colleges all over the country for sensitizing the future leader of our country about the ill effects of corruption at an early age.

He urged collective efforts for eradicating corruption so that we leave for our future generations a better and prosperous Pakistan. He said that NAB is determined to the success of its mission of eradication of corruption from Pakistan by utilizing all its resources. NAB is committed to its firm resolve to fulfil its commitment to the task of making Pakistan a corruption-free nation, the chairman said.