ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday directed senior bureaucrats to `deliver` and take the `risk` of timely decisions without fearing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

While chairing a meeting of federal secretaries and chief secretaries of the provinces, Mr Khan expressed dissatisfaction over their performance, telling them that more than `one year has passed since we came into power, but we could not deliver what the people had been expecting`.

The meeting took place almost a week after the secretaries met Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa to express their reservations over NAB actions.

Previously, a delegation of business tycoons in a meeting with the COAS had lodged complaintsagainst the NAB.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Establishment Arbab Shahzad said the secretaries shared their grievances with the prime minister against what they called `harassment` and `threatening` attitude of the NAB due to which the government officials were reluctant to sign official files.

The bureaucrats also expressed concern over media trial of senior officers by NAB and other investigation authorities on the basis of mere complaints against them.

The federal secretaries said additional and joint secretaries were reluctant to take decisions due to fear of NAB actions. They cited the recent arrest of former secretary Usman Ghani by NAB a decade after his retirement.

In a federal cabinet meeting in recent months, a senior bureaucrat had refused to sign the file of a muchawaited rail project calledMain Line-1 (ML-1) (laying of new railway line from Karachi to Peshawar), which was to be launched under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Later, in another meeting, senior officials said they were not willing to initiate ML-1 and other projects due to fear of NAB.

PM Khan assured the bureaucrats in the Tuesday meeting that he would resolve their grievances within a week or so but he would not tolerate their `goslow` approach. He hinted at amending the `controversial` laws of the NAB to provide fearless environment to bureaucrats and businessmen.

In an address, NAB chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal had claimed that the anti-graft watchdog would not call any bureaucrat who worked according to the book. `It is a propaganda that bureaucracy has stopped working due to fear of NAB,` he said.