The drive to eradicate corruption within a week announced by the Interior Minister Rehman Malik on November 1, time long since expired, lacked commitment and determination, well placed sources in Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) revealed to this scribe on Tuesday.
There remains little commitment on the part of the political government to eradicate corruption from government institutions particularly from law enforcement agencies. The veracity of this is evident given the low salaries of law enforcement agencies' personnel and lack of even basic office equipment like stationary, paper. In addition even petrol is not made officially available for their vehicles.
When this scribe talked to a high level officer in Punjab Police, he admitted corruption in Punjab Police saying that round the clock duty, low salaries and no contingency and facility is the main cause of corruption. "You can find nominal corruption in Motorway Police and Islamabad Police, because they have eight hour duty, have a better salary and other facilities, which provincial police is not being given", he added.
He said that one could contrast the performance of Traffic Police in Islamabad and City Traffic Police Officers in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad. "The Traffic Police in Islamabad is paid about 30 per cent of the fine they collect from people for violating traffic rules and have a better salary then their counterparts in other cities, which is main reason for their better and corruption free performance", he added.
Sources in law enforcement agencies also stated that government ministers do not seem to be on the same page: Federal Minister for Interior Rehman Malik launched an anti-corruption drive from November 7 and assigned FIA the lead role. On the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December Federal Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan announced an anti-corruption campaign to be launched from April, 2011.
Awan stated last week that the drive would be launched in all government departments to sensitize and raise awareness in order to address the menace of corruption and eradicate it from the country. The Federal government constituted a committee with federal secretaries, chief secretaries of four provinces, representatives of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and intelligence agencies as its members with the responsibility of addressing complaints of citizens and reviewing corruption cases related to other public departments.
According to salient features of the drive the first phase would target those departments with the greatest public dealing. All departments of Ministry of Interior have been categorically asked to curb corruption in their respective departments and the government has adopted a rhetorical policy of zero tolerance. However skeptics are challenging the government's intent to carry out these measures. A form will be distributed to all government employees with public dealings with their personal information, including their assets that would be verified by the relevant departments.