Sindh Minister for Information & Archives and Labour Saeed Ghani has said that the mandate given to the recently constituted committee comprising of the members of the business community by Chairman of National Accountability Bureau, was contradictory to the section 33-C of the NAB Ordinance. Saeed Ghani said that the section 33-C of the National Accountability Bureau's ordinance authorised chairman NAB to form various committees, but this section did not give him the power to award a mandate to a committee to decide on about who to prosecute or who to set free.
The Provincial Minister for Information said that Section 33-C of NAB was a completely different section according to which any committee formed by Chairman NAB could give recommendations to Chairman NAB in relation to bringing improvements in the rules and regulations of the NAB ordinance, or suggest about means and ways for creating awareness among the general public. He said this while addressing a press conference on Monday.
Saeed Ghani said that the courts and the Pakistan Army having their own mechanism of accountability had already been exempted from investigation in the NAB ordinance, while Chairman NAB kept on ensuring the bureaucrats on daily basis to work without any fear of NAB, and today the members of business community had also been exempted from accountability through the constitution of their committee by Chairman NAB.
He said that at present it seemed that the institution of NAB had been left with a mandate to investigate only those politicians who belong either to the Pakistan People's Party or to other opposition parties, because politicians belonging to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf were out of the purview of NAB.
He said that the committee of the members of business community set up by the NAB was illegal and aimed at controlling the businessmen. Responding to a question Saeed Ghani said that even if the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister did not like each other, they should meet because they had the positions which were constitutional. The provincial minister said that the province and the centre should stay in touch with each other as if the prime minister would not meet the chief minister then he had to send a letter to him for the redressal of the issues.
He said that prime minister had come to Karachi to end internal differences within PTI. He said as the prime minister had also called the members of the other parties to meet, he hoped the members of Grand Democratic Alliance would ask the prime minister what he had to say about MQM's proposal about article 239 of the constitution and he also expected that the members of the MQM would talk to the Prime Minister regarding Karachi's Rs162 billion fund.
The provincial minister said that the provincial government had not asked the federal government for funds as charity. He said that if the federal government did not provide the funds of the province on time, we would question, and it was the prime minister's responsibility to call on the chief minister.-PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019
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