EDITOR — The corruption cancer bedevilling our nation needs real action to rescue the declining economy.
In recent months, we have read a lot of stories on corruption in various sectors of the economy.
The public is waiting for the practical steps which can be used to curtail these vices.
What is the Zimbabwe Anti-corruption Unit doing to curb this scourge?
Is it not prudent for the nation to open a toll-free hotline dedicated to receiving tips on corruption.
This would enable us to participate actively in exposing corruption and enabling law enforcement agents to do their job. President Robert Mugabe declared zero tolerance on corruption while officially opening the first session of Zimbabwe’s 8th Parliament in Harare on September 17, 2013.
He warned his new government to crackdown on high-level graft.
“High-level corruption is costing the government dearly in terms of funds, and lost opportunities as programmes and projects are never finished.
“The law will descend heavily on those who abuse funds,” Mugabe said.
Corruption is defined by the World Bank as, “the abuse of public office for private gain.”
Corruption involves abuse and plundering of public resources to enrich or give unfair advantage to individuals, their family or their friends at the expense of national interest.
It covers a wide range of matters which embrace the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, misuse of entrusted funds, theft, fraud, nepotism and favouritism among other vices which grossly violate the society’s norms as well as the law. Referring to the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) which the government introduced in 2010, Mugabe reiterated that, “Parliament would debate a new law governing the fund to plug loop-holes that led to the abuse of the facility during the past few years.”
Numerous Members of Parliament were probed in 2011 after it emerged that some of them had misappropriated CDF allocated to them for constituency development.
President Mugabe said that there would be a Constituency Development Fund Bill to be debated by the 8th Parliament soon.
The Bill, once passed into law, will make it mandatory for members of Parliament to account for the CDFs entrusted on them by the government for developmental programmes in their respective constituencies.
Suitable Kajau