Minister for Information, Law and Human Rights Senator Pervaiz Rashid on Wednesday said that there was zero tolerance for corruption in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government.
Speaking at an event in connection with International Anti-corruption Day, the minister said that transparency and eradication of corruption were issues very close to the PML-N government which strongly believed in impartial accountability.
The minister said that the record proved that no major corruption scandal had surfaced during the incumbent government’s tenure, which, he said, was striving hard to ensure consistency and sustainability of an accountable and transparent system.
He said that NAB being the apex accountability agency of the country was responsible for curbing corruption by means of three pronged strategy of awareness, prevention and enforcement.
The minister said that corruption was a complex social, political and economic phenomenon that affected all countries. It undermined democratic institutions, slowed economic development and contributed to government’s instability, he added.
He said that due to corruption in a country, economic development could become stunted as it discouraged foreign direct investment and small businesses within the country often found it impossible to overcome start-up costs.
Rashid said that corruption instilled a sense of despondency in the society and destroyed the social fabric by replacing its core values with tangible gains as social currency, he said.
Corruption was a menace which could not be addressed by legal or administrative measures alone, he said, adding that it could only be eradicated when the civil society and the anti-corruption institutions like NAB worked side by side.
