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The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) said on Monday people should help shore up the fight to uproot all forms of corruption and stop the plunder of public resources as the country desperately needs to reduce deep-rooted poverty.
ACB director Michael Mtegha said in Mangochi at the opening of a week-long workshop for members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament that corruption is a cancer that has bred undesirable results.
Mtegha said corruption has a negative effect on both the public and private sectors and makes it difficult to have open and accountable systems, which are vital as building blocks to good governance and an effective public service.
”It is an evil that should never be allowed to take root among us,” said Mtegha.
He said corruption and related crimes, such as embezzlement, fraud, extortion and nepotism, will make the country’s pro-poor budgetary strategies useless if
they are not stamped out.
“The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (MPRSP) is an ambitious initiative, which we have to be proud of and ensure that the targets are met,” said Mtegha.
“However it has to be noted that even with the best strategies for pro-poor growth, poverty will not be reduced unless there is development-oriented governance, political will and mindset,” he added.
Mtegha said the public should support the bureau’s efforts to have a new corrupt practices law to replace the one enacted in 1995, seen as a weak law against emerging corruption related crimes.
Mtegha said procurement and public finance management bills passed by Parliament in addition to the anti-money laundering and declaration of assets bills that are still pending, will also help to strengthen the law against the vice.
Royal Norwegian ambassador Asbjorn Eidhammer, whose government is helping the bureau in its prevention drive, said corruption is a double tax on the poor.
“In a country with few public resources, corruption hits the common man and woman harder. When school buildings are not completed and the funds disappear,
it harms the children who are deprived to education,” he said.
He said the poor suffer when “artificial high prices” are paid for food aid imports, which at times never reach them.
He said even though the country has fallen sharply on the ranking list of Transparency International, it was not yet a dustbin case. But he said more should be done to finalise high profile cases that have taken too long in the courts.
He said he believed recent publicised cases contributed to the withholding of budgetary aid by the country’s major donors in the last two years.
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