LAHORE - Punjab provincial cabinet committee on Anti Corruption Establishment (ACE) has endorsed 90 percent of proposals presented by the ACE director general and gave him a go-ahead for betterment of the establishment.

The meeting was chaired by Provincial Minister for Law Raja Muhammad Basharat. Ch Zaheer, minister for prosecution; Syed Ehtisham Qadir, prosecutor general of Punjab, and senior officers of ACE were also present on the occasion.

It is pertinent to mention here that Cabinet committee few days back had expressed its dissatisfaction over the Anti Corruption’s two years performance. The committee asked new Director General ACE Mathar Niaz Rana to come up with proposals for the betterment of department.

During tenure of former DG Brg Muzafar Ali Ranjha, Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment’s (ACE) conviction rate in registered cases remained less than two percent during July 2016 to August 2018. Due to poor prosecution and investigation, only in 98 cases out of 5301 accused were convicted during above said period. ACE rec0eived 46071 complaints out of which 22513 enquiries were initiated and 21672 enquiries disposed of, 5301 cases registered while 4796 cases disposed of, 2885 challan were submitted in the courts. ACE officials conducted 654 raids during two years and arrested 3922 accused, director general briefed the committee.

The DG proposed the training of ACE staff for capacity building from NAB and United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Officer deputed in Technical wing considered as back bone of the department would be made duty bound to complete technical reports including site visit and lab tests within eight weeks in all respects.

The DG further proposed Help Desks to be established at the districts level to facilitate the ill-literate peoples and at the same time to discourage the fake applications and habitual applicants, Complaint Scrutiny Committees should be established at Regional level. To minimize the number of fake applications new terms and conditions were introduced for the applicant. Investigation Officers have been directed to verify the application and supporting documents first. Track record of the applicant would be checked and habitual applicants would be discouraged. Instead of calling respondent immediately after the receiving of application, applicant will be called first to verify the allegations leveled in application and supporting documents will be sought from him to proceed further. Mathar Niaz proposed that only on the basis of case registered against any officer his promotion should be stopped and not on the basis of inquiry.

DG believed that deadline should be fixed for the finalization of inquiries and cases and the most important thing he pointed out was the sending back the deputationists serving in ACE for the last several years. DG was of the view that not more than three years should be given to any officer serving in ACE on deputation basis. Erratic

DG demanded 14 engineers to be posted in ACE against vacant posts so that Technical wing of ACE could work better with their presence. Anti Corruption laws are very old and these laws should be reviewed, since the evidence admissible in 1947 are now not admissible. DG was of the opinion that those departments having development budgets should be monitored and presence of ACE officials should be ensured in their relevant meetings. Audit paras are source of information and ACE should be authorized to start probe on the basis of Audit reports.

The committee members endorsed the proposals presented by current DG ACE and gave him go-ahead to work for the betterment of the department.

DG was of the view that proceeding against anyone on the basis of source report should be discouraged. He further said that to curb the abuse of Anti corruption laws, that only Source Reports approved at HQ would be used for initiation of probe and enquiries. But Committee members differed with the DG and said that Source report should not be discouraged rather Director should be made authority to take action on sources report.