28 Sep 2020

  Strengthening management systems and procedures and executing them can help eliminate corruption.

The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) director general, Mr Tymon Katlholo in his presentation to Ghanzi District Council on September 25 labeled corruption as a symptom of management failures and cautioned that there were always sharks preying on value drivers.

He said the fight against corruption was embedded in set management systems and procedures of an organisation, noting that combating corruption was linked to promoting good corporate governance and ensuring that public organisational resources were managed in a prudent and efficient manner.

“It therefore goes without saying that strategies to promote an anti- corruption culture are or should be founded on integrity, ethical business conduct and the desire for prudent management and leadership,” stated Mr Katlholo, further explaining that leadership and political will created an environment for the administration to run smoothly.

The DCEC director general said in the fight against corruption, there should be a deterrence and that when the DCEC dealt with criminal issues, management of individual organisations should be dealing with administrative ones.

“The fact that the issue is reported to the police does not stop your administrative action on the basis that one has flouted administration systems. Transparency and accountability expose corruption but when one suppresses transparency and accountability there will be corruption,” Mr Katlholo said.

He highlighted the need for timeously identifying corruption risks and factors that influence them as well as analysing existing risk management frameworks and how they pertain to managing corruption risk.

Mr Katlholo said organisations should develop and implement a necessary response component of a successful corruption risk management programme.

Concerning irregular awarding of COVID-19 tenders, he said the DCEC was investigating some cases pertaining to that. He added that one of the tenants of good government was to remove conflict of interest.

Mr Katlholo said the arrangement was bound to create conflict of interest and promised that they would advise accordingly.

Latest international ratings, he said, suggested that corruption featured most among legislators.

Earlier councillor Shane Kebadile had sought to know DCEC’s position on allowing government employees to venture into business

For her part, deputy director general, Ms Erica Ndlovu stated that their conviction rate stood between 65 and 75 per cent and explained that some of the cases ended up without the corruption element, but having occurred due to maladministration.

She regretted that the community partnership remained low in the fight against corruption and also that non adoption of national anti-corruption policy was a challenge. ends