02 Feb 2022

Lobatse Town Council (LTC) staff have been advised to steer clear from any form of corruption when doing government work.

Facilitating the council’s corruption prevention workshop on Tuesday, an official from the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) Ms Kutlwano Palai-Chidube explained that corruption could erase public confidence on any organisation and taint the integrity of officers.

She added that corruption could lead to wastage of public resources resulting in destruction of the economy.

The official said the recent decline of Botswana in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was mystifying since government had demonstrated commitment to fight corruption.

Ms Palai-Chidube said Botswana recently went down 10 places in the CPI rankings to position 45 in the world with a score of 55 percent.

“What is surprising is that the government remains committed to fighting corruption. It has done everything to adhere to international standards by forming agencies like Anti- Terrorism Agency, FIA (the Financial

Intelligence Agency) which fights money laundering and put them into effect. Government has also effected the necessary pieces of legislation to fight corruption,” she said.

Ms Palai-Chidube asked participants to ponder on why corruption perceptions seemed to be increasing in the government system.

She said that could be because more and more officers had become corruptible.

“We should fight corruption because we want integrity in our system and to maintain public confidence,” she said.

She said the most common of corruption in the government system was bribery or petty corruption, which entails officers providing services to customers in return for financial reward.

The official added that another common form of corruption in the government system was the practice of nepotism in employment of officers and favoritism for promotions.

Other forms of corruption found in the government system, Ms Palai-Chidube said, was embezzlement of funds and resources by officers, insider trading and abuse of privileged information for financial benefit. 

She said corruption prone officers were usually ones who interact closely with clients.

“Corruption usually lead to poor performance by officers which in turn results in poor service delivery. Our children are being robbed of jobs because of corruption,” she said.

Officially opening the workshop, Lobatse town clerk Mr Nelson Mogapi said corruption could affect investor confidence because investors never want to operate in environments with rampant corruption.

“We should all contribute in the fight against corruption we want our economy to grow. Corruption can be stopped by us not the police,” he said, urging the LTC staff to strive to make their organisation corruption free. Ends