Pak Govt's pressure nixes Transparency International's 2011 corruption survey

Islamabad, June 30(ANI): Arm-twisting by the corruption-plagued Pakistan Government has prevented Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) from producing its annual National Corruption Perception Survey (NCPS) this year.

TIP Chairman Adil Gilani said that the IBA, which conducted last year's NCPS survey for the TIP, expressed its reluctance to do it this year for the reason that its students have been harassed by Pakistani government agencies for their last year's work.

Gilani, who too was harassed by the government for highlighting serious cases of corruption and the rising trend of the menace in the country, told The News that there would be no NCPS 2011, which is generally launched in June every year.

The TIP-government relations became bad in 2010 because the rulers were extremely displeased with the successive Transparency reports showing the present Pakistan People's Party (PPP) regime as amongst the most corrupt entities in the world.

The NCPS 2010 showed that 70 per cent of the Pakistanis perceived President Asif Ali Zardari's government more corrupt than that of former dictator General Pervez Musharraf.

According to the survey, the overall corruption in 2010 increased to an awe-inspiring level of 223 billion rupees, as compared to 195 billion rupees in 2009.

While launching the survey last year, the TIP had observed that the credibility of Pakistan was almost at the lowest level, which is evident from the fact that there has been no funding in the previous two years from the Friends of Pakistan trust fund managed by the World Bank.

Findings of the NCPS Survey 2010 showed lack of accountability, lack of merit, and low salaries as the three main reasons of corruption.

However, instead of checking corruption and improving Pakistan's image, the government started using third-rate tactics to bar independent international organisations from assessing the levels of corruption in the country.

Such has been the situation that no less than TIP Chairman Adil Gilani started receiving threats. He was also involved by the government-controlled Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in an alleged corruption case to prevent him from producing reports of corruption. (ANI)