The list of people who have benefited from the NRO is just a fraction of the large number of people from our elite whose corruption has made Pakistan bankrupt. This is a country where the largest foreign exchange component is earned from the remittances of its expatriates which mostly consist of skilled or semiskilled labour or middle and lower middle class professionals. While these loyal expatriates repatriate their hard-earned foreign exchange to Pakistan, members of the establishment are involved in transfer of billions of dollars through illegal sources to buy foreign assets or beef up their foreign bank accounts. With this money, they buy factories, houses and villas in Europe, Canada and USA. A large majority of the civil and khaki bureaucracy of this country also lives beyond their means with assets whose fractions cannot be amassed with their declared incomes. Mian Nawaz Sharif has today complimented his former P.S. Mr Saeed Mehdi for resigning from the post of the advisor to CM Punjab. This is what happens in every civilized nation of the world where people in public service or those seeking top administrative posts are required to submit themselves to a more scathing regime of scrutiny than that applicable to the common man. These public servants have forgotten that they are no more serving a colonial power but are servants of the citizens of a sovereign independent nation. Every Pakistani is morally and legally required to declare all his assets. The issue still remains whether bureaucrats like Mr Saeed Mehdi, Salman Farooqi etc or politicians like Ch. Ahmed Mukhtar etc and their benefactors or their families, have assets beyond their known legal sources of income. -NABEELA HAYAT, Lahore, November 28.