Qamar Zaman Chaudhary Chairman, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) said the NAB had established Forensic Science Lab which had been made operational with an aim at equipping NAB with latest technology to cater to its emerging needs to eliminate menace of corruption from the society. Enumerating the achievements and initiatives of the present management of NAB, the Chairman NAB while addressing as chief guest at a ceremony said that NAB was committed to eradicate corruption from the country by adopting zero tolerance policy across-the-board.
He said a concept of combined investigation Team (CIT) had been introduced as investigation officers and prosecution were working as a team to ensure transparency and unbiased investigations. He said corruption was a plague that had a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. The Chairman said the experience of 16 years of NAB had shown that struggle against corruption was not the fight of one man, one institution rather the responsibility lies on every citizen. "We can only win this war through collective efforts of all segments of society. We need to show cooperation and spirit to fight the monster of corruption," he said.
Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, Chairman NAB said NAB's special emphasis was on setting up character building societies in educational institutes across the country to build an effective edifice against corruption and presently we had established more than 22,000 character building societies (CBS) which was a great achievement.
He said NAB had emphasised importance of students and given them an important role in fight against corruption with the purpose to create awareness amongst the students regarding the adverse affects of corruption and spread the message in their homes and communities and build alliances to tackle this monster at the grass root level.
He said NAB was trying to create awareness among the people about effects of corruption. It is encouraging that for the first time anti-corruption had been made a part of development agenda in the context of governance. "Our experience at fighting corruption has led us to understand that enforcement alone cannot be cure to corruption. It requires a co-ordinated and a concerted effort with a three pronged strategy of Awareness, Prevention and Enforcement," he said.
The Chairman said the responsibility to educate the public on ill effects of corruption and to make it aware of its adverse effects lies greatly with the media. "It is heartening to see that media is playing a proactive role in this drive."
He said under its proactive approach, NAB had been engaging different governmental and non-governmental organisations and civil society in its fight against corruption and to help disseminate "SAY NO TO CORRUPTION" message from their respective platforms. He said with the help of properly functioning forensic Lab, investigation Officers (IOs) probing different high profile corruption cases will be able to conduct Complaint verifications, Inquiries and Investigations transparently and on merit.
He said NAB's Forensic Science LAB has the facilities of Digital Forensics, Fingerprint Forensics and Questioned Documents. Establishment of Forensic Science LAB will help in retrieving of documents from electronic devices like Cell Phones, Computers, iPads and networks and its preservation to determine authorship of questioned hand writing, identity questioned typescripts and printed documents to detect forgeries in questioned documents to determine interpolation, additions or overwriting and substitution of papers, and to work on Questioned Fingerprints for comparison and/or identification purposes.-PR