LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Thursday that corruption exists across Pakistan, including in his own ministry and in the Capital Development Authority (CDA), and that it has to be acknowledged and fixed.
“If anyone in Pakistan says there is no corruption in Pakistan, then, with apologies, corruption exists across the whole of Pakistan, and it is our responsibility to end it,” Naqvi told reporters at the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency office in Lahore.
As the government, he said, it was the authorities’ responsibility to catch corruption with evidence, highlight it, and stop it.
‘Even in our own ministry’
Naqvi said that despite all the strictness he and Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry could apply, corrupt people had still been found in the interior ministry, and they had been caught and locked up.
He said he also acknowledged corruption in the CDA, the authority that runs the capital. “Where it exists, one has to admit it and fix it,” he said.
‘Almost on the same page’
Naqvi said Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had spoken of a coming reset in politics. “My suggestion is that things overall are going to reset,” he said, adding that he and Bilawal were “almost on the same page” on the matter.
Bilawal called this week for a reset of the system through democratic unity. Naqvi said in July that the system of governance had failed and needed a reset, an argument that has run through the debate over new provinces.
Naqvi did not name any officials or say how many people had been arrested in the interior ministry.
