By Dean Chisambo
Deputy Secretary to the Office of President and Cabinet who is also Head of Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU) Dr Janet Banda has challenged the controlling officers to take their responsibility seriously in the fight against corruption in this country.
Banda made the remarks during the controlling officers forum meeting in Lilongwe.
She said there is a need for the controller officers to lead by example because if they are not pushing or doing the right thing, they cannot implement their mandate on the corruption issue, then nothing will work.
Banda disclosed that according to her assessment, in terms of institutions and structures they are doing well due to presence of Ant- Corruption Bureau (ACB) , Institution Integrity Committees (ICC’s) and Structural wise but in terms of fighting against corruption they are struggling.
She said : ” Normally in the Office of the President and Cabinet, what we do is to ask the ACB to give us the list of institutions where there are no integrity Committees and which are not functional at all, so when they give us that then we take up from there.
” Because we can summon the controlling officers to ask them why this is not happening in their institutions, that is why this forum is very important for the government especially to take stock of what is happening in various Malawi Departments and Agencies ( MDA’s).”
Banda expressed great concern for the few MDA’s that do not have functional Institution Integrity Committees ( IIC’s) according to the report they have received.
In his remarks Ant- Corruption Bureau (ACB) Acting Director General Hillary Chilomba said the platform will help the controlling officers who are doing well and those who are not doing fine to find the way forward on how they are supposed to do it.
Chilomba said for those MDA’s which do not have an IIC’s , will be reported to the legal affairs committe of Parliament where they will be summoned why they don’t have IIC’s and why they don’t perform well.
In his remarks Legal Affairs Committe chairperson Peter Dimba encouraged the MDS’s which do not have the IIC’s to make sure that they must put in place the IIC’s because the idea is to decentralize the fight against corruption.
He lamented that corruption is everywhere in all institutions wheather in public or private saying they encourage the institutions to have the IIC’s in order to foster the culture of Integrity.
