01 Feb 2018

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Ms Kebonye Moepeng has called on public officers to exercise proper management in order to close all gaps that lead to corruption practices.

Addressing senior management under her ministry in Maun, she emphasised the need for senior officers to orientate their juniors so that they fully understand that government services should not be sold for their benefit.

She informed officers that the ministry’s performance on issues of anti-corruption was not satisfactory, adding that the ministry used to be rated amongst the first three, but last year it got position 10.

“Although we did not perform badly, we should do more to uproot corruption practices. Corruption is done by us due to failure to manage our resources,” she added.

Ms Moepeng revealed that corruption started small and grew with time hence the need to take on board all officers on issues related to corruption. She said they should make them understand corruption practices, adding that people were watching as rankings were done based on information collected from them.

Furthermore, she revealed that her office has received reports of suspicious incidents and that investigations were carried out. She also noted that corruption could affect all irrespective of position or status and advised all to be alert and say no to it.

The permanent secretary also shared with the officers that the ministry did not do well in overall performance management during review.  Some of the areas that she said the ministry performed below par included financial management, human resources management disability management, core mandate and disaster management.

She appealed to departments to revisit all the areas that they did not do well on and come up with strategies on how to improve the rating. She said officers should understand that their average performance was evidence that they were doing something wrong, hence the need to correct that.

Ms Moepeng said poor financial management was worrisome and advised officers to reflect on their operations and planning processes and manage their affairs properly.

She said some departments requested funds and failed to utilise them.

Officers were also advised to live the principles of the Public Service Charter which espoused accountability, neutrality and transparency.

Ms Moepeng reminded them about the vision of the ministry which says “quality life for all,” adding that the vision called all to ring a bell if there was any suspicious incidents. ENDS