29 Jun 2015

North West District councillors have been urged to play their part in curbing corruption in the public service.

Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development anti-corruption project manager, Mr Bakae Karata, said councillors should join hands with staff to come up with strategies to eradicate practices of corruption.

Mr Karata said this when addressing NWD full council meeting recently to sensitise councillors about the ministry’s Anti-Corruption Policy which was launched last year August.

He said the core objective of each employee and political leaders should be to completely eradicate corruption and observed that the time of talking of reducing corruption was long past, hence the need for all to develop a zero tolerance for corruption.

He said corruption was a monster which continued to hamper the discharge of service delivery to the customers and urged political leaders to spearhead in the implementation of the policy. He said their ministry was rated amongst the top in corruption and the statistics indicated that there has been a steady decline in the level of corruption.

Mr Karata said the policy was meant to arouse and standardise the rejection of corrupt practices by employees and other stakeholders. In addition, he stressed that the strategies and initiatives should be put in place to continue fighting corruption in all departments under the ministry.

He emphasised the need for councillors to familiarise themselves with the policy in order to comply with it. He also called them to team up with their customers to make an impact in tackling corruption.

He said the Directorate of Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) alone could not stamp out corruption and as such, partners in development should scan their environment to add on to the existing innovative ways of combating corruption and its related offences.

He also pointed out that corruption existed in councils and urged people to always report incidences of corruption to relevant authorities. He said if efforts were not made to uproot it, ministry’s reputation would be tarnished as it would be rendered a corrupt one.

Councillors were advised to declare gifts and form committees which would sensitise other staff and come up with interventions to eliminate corruption.For their part, councillors welcomed the policy and pointed out that corruption did exist in the workplace and has resulted in poor service delivery. 

They emphasised the need to train the right people who would sensitise others about the best interventions to combat corruption. Some councillors noted that the level of poverty in the district bred corruption and suggested that poverty should be eradicated first in order for the policy to produce the expected results.

Councillor Motlaleselelo Motlaleselelo said most people who were poverty stricken were involved in corruption incidents and they were always prosecuted while some rich people involved never get prosecuted and asked for equal treatment for all.
Councillor Kebareeditse Ntsogotlho complained about the period taken to finalise reported incidents, noting that in most cases informers were being investigated. 

He also wanted to know who audit the investigators, noting that if they were not audited, that alone could breed corruption incidences. ENDS