PESHAWAR: National Accountability Bureau chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry on Wednesday declared corruption the mother of all evils and asked the bureau`s officials to work more vigilantly and diligently to check corrupt practices in the country.

He issued the directions during a visit to the NAB KPK regional bureau here to examine its performance on the basis of the annual inspection conducted by the chairman`s inspection and monitoring team (CIMT).

According to a statement issued here, the CIMT was tasked with conducting the annual inspection of the NAB regional bureau`s affairs for 2015.

The inspection did the job from Feb 2 to Feb 4 on the basis of the newly-introduced quantified grading system.

A senior member of the team gave a detailed briefing to the NAB chairman about the inspection and highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the regional bureau.

He said 80 per cent marks given under the grading sys-tem are considered outstanding or excellent, from 60 per cent to 79 per cent very good, from 40 per cent to49percentgood andless than 40 per cent below average.

On the occasion, the NAB chairman said his organisation was committed to eradicating corruption across the board by adopting a zero tolerance policy.

`Corruption is the mother of all evils. Corruption undermines development and rule of law. Corruption not only causes delays in the early completion of development projects but also causes huge losses to national exchequer,` he said.

The chairman said the NAB was established in 1999 as the country`s apex anti-corruption organisation, which was assigned with the elimination of corruption through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement and recovery of looted money.

He said the NAB regional office contributing well to the overall performance of the bureau.

Mr. Qamar Zaman said under-quantified grading system prepared by the Inspection and monitoring team chairman has graded NAB KPK`s performance as outstanding/excellent with 80 percent Operational Efficiency Index (OEI).

He appreciated the performance of the NAB KPK under the supervision of DG Shahzad Saleem.