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Welcome to our Success Stories section.
Here you will find true stories about victims of corruption, their struggle and their eventual triumph. The names have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved. We hope these stories help to inspire you to stand up to corruption.
Sindh Bank
In 2009, Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Public Procurement Act, 2009, aimed to streamline the process of procurement in the Sindh province and to bring transparency in it. It extends to the whole of Sindh, covering all procurements.However, the Chief Minister of Sindh granted the Sindh Bank Ltd a special exemption from the Procurement Act and completely ignored the rules in it. Since the matter was a violation of the Act, and could have given way to major corruption, all the members of the Board of Trustees of Transparency International (TI) Pakistan decided to initiate a legal battle by challenging this
exemption in the Sindh High Court. Thus, ALAC filed a petition in Sindh High Court Pakistan against the exemption given to the Sindh Bank. It is prayed in the petition that since the matter was of a grave nature, a stay order against the orders of the Chief Minister should be granted till the time the case is finally decided.ALAC submitted that the Sindh Government issued the notification for political reasons, which was in violation of the law of the Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Act, 2009.
ALAC added that the exemption was granted to the respondent bank knowing full well that such an exemption was illegal. The Chief Secretary Sindh issued impugned notification on the direction of the Sindh Chief Minister wherein the respondent Sindh Bank was granted special exemption from the Sindh Public Procurement Act 2009. The Sindh Public Procurement Act was passed by the Sindh Assembly and contended grant of exemption to the bank from this law was ultra vires and mala fide. Similarly, it was an affront to the law enacted by the Sindh Assembly.It was also submitted in the petition that Section 21 of the Act does not permit any such exemption. The petition added that the Board of the SPPRA is only allowed to consider such an exemption of an object or class of objects in national interest and if that was not the case, it would be illegal.After that, the Sindh High Court suspended the operation of the provincial government’s notification to exempt the Sindh Bank from procurement rules and issued notices to the Chief Secretary Sindh, Sindh Bank and Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority.
Successful acquiring of Pakistan Cards
These cases relate to Pakistan Card, an initiative launched by the Government of Sindh to provide cash grants to people affected by the floods of 2011. The cash grant is to be distributed through an ATM Card, along the same lines as the Watan Card. ALAC received three complaints from Irshad Ali*, Ajmal Khan* and Kareem Ahmed* from Sindh against NADRA that had issued their Pakistan Cards to someone else, and another complaint from Imran Jamali* who did not receive the second instalment on his Pakistan Card. ALAC told them to send a written complaint and provide relevant documents. After receiving the evidence from the complainants, a letter was written to the Provincial
Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) requesting them to address this issue, a copy of the letter was also sent to Govt. of Sindh. After a few days when the complainant confirmed that no action had been taken, ALAC wrote another letter to the same authority requesting the same.
Section Officer-I (Secretary to Govt. of Sindh) took notice of ALAC’s letter and asked the Director General PDMA Sindh, Karachi, to provide a detailed report on Pakistan Card complaints sent by Transparency International – Pakistan. On 31-8-2012, a letter of the PDMA Deputy Director (Operations) was received enclosing a letter from NADRA which explained that the complainants are eligible to receive Pakistan Card and advised them to receive their cards from NADRA office. The case is a success from ALAC’s point of view. Successful Compliances under the PPRA After TI Pakistan’s intervention, following compliances have been recorded under the PPRA rules: 1. Violation of Sindh Public Procurement Rules 2010 by Sindh Bank, Karachi’s Tender Notice for the Supply of Network equipment, Computers, Printers and Note books/Laptops. 2. Violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004, Senior Admin Officer, PAEC General Hospital Islamabad's Tender Notice for Supply Sofa 3 in 1. Procuring agency restricting bidders to quote China make which is against of PPRA rules ; Rule 10. 3. News Report about the outsourcing of NADRA records blaming Minister of Interior, who was personally involved in facilitating the deal, for being reckless with the outsourcing of the data of millions of Pakistani overseas. The news report is published in daily "The News" on 14th July 2012. 4. State Life Insurance Tender Notice for Supply / Printing of Computer Stationeries published in Jang 17-7-2012 is against PPRA Rules 2004, as the bidding documents are not available on the mentioned sites. Which is the violation of Rule 23(5) 5. Cantonment Board's Karachi Tender Notice for the Supply of Allopathic Drugs/Medicine published in Dawn 12-7-2012 is the violation of PPRA Rules 2004, as it has not mentioned anything about the bidding documents. Hence Rule 23. violated. 6. Violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004, Executive Manager, Pakistan Television Corporation Limited , Islamabad's Tender Notice for Supply of Lead Acid Storage Battery. PTV is not providing the technical details to the bidders which is the violation of Rule 23(2) 7. Violation of Public Procurement Rues 2004, Project Director, Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research , (PCSIR) Karachi's Tender Notice for the Up gradation of Substation and External Electrical Works. The procuring agency violated the Rule 23 (1) of PPRA 2004; the bidding documents were provided 6 days after the issuance of tender. 8. Complaint on disqualification of M/s NESPAK in KMC projects. NESPAK is a registered consultant with the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC), with license No.1, and had submitted the renewal fee document to the KMC. According to the PEC by-laws, a consultant whose application for registration/renewal is pending with PEC, shall be considered for participation in pre-qualification as well as in the tendering process and submit the valid/renewed license at the time of signing the Contract Agreement.
*Actual names have been changed
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Continuous problem with landline connections
damaging business

Khurram, a handicapped gentleman, was running a real estate business in Clifton, Karachi. He came to the ALAC office to discuss his complaint concerning his telephone connections.
He said that for some unknown reason his phone line had stopped working. He explained that his business relied on this line of communication and he could not afford it to not work.
He further told us that during the last three years, he had changed his number many times, but as soon as his number became public it would stop working. He had complained to the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) many times, but they had not paid attention to this matter. He feared that his competitors may have bribed some of the PTCL employees so that he would go out of business.
His documents were reviewed and ALAC wrote a letter on 18th January 2011 to the Director Consumer Protection Dept. of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) requesting them to look into this case. When a reply was not received, a reminder was sent to them.
On 21st February 2011, the ALAC received a phone call from a PTA official who said that after receiving our letter they took action and a meeting had been conducted between the aggrieved customer and PTCL’s Area Business Manager. The PTA official informed us that the matter had been resolved and requested us to confirm this with the complainant.
The complainant confirmed his meeting with the Area Business Manger and told us that his telephone line was now functioning properly.
Allotment and Possession of a Property of an
Old Man

Mr. Khan* was an old, retired man living in Karachi. His late father, an Ex Corporal Technician of Pakistan Air Force (PAF), was granted 32 acres of agriculture land under the Defense Force Quota in the year 1966-1967. His father paid the instalments up to 1987 and later expired in 1993. At the time of his death, there were some instalments left.Mr. Khan approached the concerned Revenue Authorities for the issuance of a challaan towards the payment of the outstanding instalments with respect to the land. He also approached offices of the Revenue Department for this purpose, but he was not issued any challaan.
Thereafter, he filed an application to the Ombudsman for the possession of his plot. By this time, he had received the challaan which was then paid and submitted by him. Hence, all his outstanding fines were paid. However, he was still not given possession because the Revenue Officers wanted some easy money to come their way. Adamant against giving bribes, Mr. Khan kept on visiting different offices of the Revenue Departments despite his poor health.After some time, on 28 April 2008, the Honorable Provincial Ombudsman (Mohtasib Ala) Sindh passed an order in his favour and directed the Executive District Officer (Revenue) Sukkur to hand over physical possession of the land within 30 days. Even though the EDO Revenue was supposed to hand over the possession to Mr. Khan, the complainant was deprived of the physical possession of the land despite fulfilling all the required formalities and paper work.Thereafter he approached TI-Pakistan and lodged a complaint.
TI-Pakistan firstly scrutinized and verified his compliant. Then, on 9th July 2010, TI-Pakistan wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary Sindh, Secretary Revenue Sindh, and Executive District Officer Revenue with a copy to the Provincial Ombudsman to look into the matter and redress his complaint.In reply to ALAC’s letter on 14-10-2010, the Honorable Provincial Ombudsman (Mohtasib) Sindh directed the Executive District Office Revenue to complete all the legal formalities to resolve the issue regarding the allotment of land and removal of encroachments in respect of the allotted land in question.Mr. Khan visited the Executive District Officer Revenue office a number of times but the Executive District Officer Revenue was unavailable despite issuance of such clear cut orders by the Ombudsman.ALAC wrote a letter to the Executive District Officer Revenue again on 13th May 2011 and requested him to look into the matter and redress his complaint; we further requested to fix a date for collecting the allotment order.Thereafter, the complainant happily informed us that he got the allotment/possession of the property and that the matter was resolved successfully.This is another success story of ALAC as after its intervention the relevant authority provided the asking relief to the aggrieved person.
*Actual name is changed
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Scooter Manufacturing Company in Residential
Area of Hyderabad

Dr. Asim*, who was living in a residential area of Hyderabad, called ALAC and informed us that in his area someone had opened a Scooter Manufacturing Company, which is against the Environmental Protection Laws. He wanted to file a civil suit in the court and also had an intention to contest it in person. For this reason he contacted ALAC and wanted to get the requisite help and advice. He further asked to know which laws were actually being violated in his case, as he was a lay man and was unaware of this knowledge.ALAC’s lawyer informed and advised him that Section 278 PPC had been violated along with sections 11,12,13,14 and 16 of the Pakistan Environment Protection
Act. He took this information and thanked us. The next time he called, he informed us that he had filed a civil suit in the Civil Court, Hyderabad. The complainant called again and informed that the opponent party told the court that they are ready to move his business from there but he would have to tear down Dr. Asim's boundary wall to enable his machinery to be moved. The court told him that if that was necessary he would be allowed but he would have to reconstruct this wall at his own expense. On the other hand, the complainant was of the view that machinery could be moved without tearing down the wall.When he discussed this matter with ALAC’s lawyers, they advised him to file an application for appointment of a commissioner by the court who would check out and send a report to the court and state whether it is necessary for the wall to be taken down or not so that the court may pass an appropriate Order accordingly.
On the advice of ALAC’s lawyers, the complainant filed an application. Later on, he got the orders in his favour and his opponent had to remove the machinery without tearing his wall. For the rest of his matter, the complainant contacted us again and informed that his case had been fixed for final orders.After a few days, we called him back for an update when he informed us that the Civil Court had passed an order in his favour. He had won the case and paid thanks to ALAC for guidance and helping him regarding this issue.The matter had been resolved successfully.
*Actual name is changed
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Illegal allotment of a plot on 100-feet-wide road
adjacent to Plot C-64

On 24th February 2010, ALAC received a phone call from Mr. Ahmed. He told us that he had a complaint against Sindh Industrial & Trading Estate (SITE) and wanted to visit ALAC’s office personally. He was given an appointment and was advised to bring a written application/complaint with relevant documents.
The next day, 25th February 2010, he visited ALAC’s office and shared some very interesting information. He said that Sindh Industrial & Trading Estate (SITE) had allotted a plot on a 100-feet-wide road in the industrial area at a portion adjacent to his plot, which had been
serving as a major thoroughfare. He provided the copy of the Site plan. It could be easily seen from the plan that the allotment of the plot completely blocked the smooth flow of the heavy traffic, causing difficulty to the citizens.
On 2nd April 2010, after carefully examining the complaint and related documents, ALAC wrote a letter to SITE’s Managing Director (MD) Karachi in which he was told that SITE had illegally allotted a plot adjacent to the complainant’s plot (no. C-64). ALAC also explained that Mr. Ahmed had written to the relevant office on 17th November 2009 regarding the issue, but no action had been taken by the SITE authorities. ALAC requested SITE’s MD to look into the matter and if found correct, take action and direct the concerned staff to resolve it under the law.
On ALAC’s request, the MD took action and on 7th April 2010 at 1:46 PM ALAC received an email from Ahmed. He informed us, with great delight, that the matter had been resolved because of our support and communication. The encroachment had been removed and the road was restored, while the traffic was back to normal. This has been a great success for ALAC and its mission.
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