Javed Khan
PESHAWAR
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has opened inquiries against the former representatives of local bodies for receiving kickbacks and
embezzlements in different developmental projects.
A senior NAB official said that lately a decision was taken at the meeting of the anti-graft body’s executive board to conduct inquiries’ against the developmental projects completed in districts including Swat, Mardan, Charsadda, and Peshawar by former nazims.
The official, requesting his name not to be revealed due to confidentiality of the probing process, said that inquiry against the tehsil and district nazims were launched after the NAB received several complaints of embezzlements, irregularity and kickbacks in these projects.
The official told that the proceedings in the alleged corruption cases will be taken to their logical end before the upcoming local bodies’ election in the province.
“The KP’s planning and development department and local government board have been communicated for the availability of the complete record of the projects,” he informed.
A senior official from provincial local government ministry said that KP’s local government Act of 2013 had developed the power beyond the district, tehsil and union council to even the lower tier of village and neighborhood council.
However, he said, with respect to the allocation of funds specifies under the Act, the local government did not comply with proposed budgetary allocations.
During the last local government tenure, the provincial government disbursement of funds plan had hardly met the needs of local bodies to ensure the efficiency of their job while serving the community and initiating mega developmental schemes in different districts he added.
Instead of investigating the former local bodies’ representatives, independent institutions of accountability should have investigated the funds slashed from the local government bodies.
Former local government representatives associated with opposition parties described NAB’s aim to probe earlier developmental schemes a plan of political engineering ahead of the upcoming local body’s polls in the province.
They also term it an attempt to push opposition to a limit where they will be compelled to switch loyalties. Moreover, some opposition leaders fear that arrests by the anti-corruption watchdog in fabricated cases will be made in the province, like other parts of the country, in the backdrop of calls by opposition to start agitation against the PTI’s rule.
