Maravi

Keep govt accountable, urges Norwegian minister

Keep govt accountable, urges Norwegian minister
By Ernest Chanda
Thu 25 Feb. 2010, 04:02 CAT

VISITING Norwegian state secretary for development cooperation Ingrid Fiskaa has called on Zambians to keep the government accountable over the use of public funds. And Auditor General Anna Chifungula has said her office will not be discouraged if no action is taken to probe culprits mentioned in the annual reports.

In an interview after visiting the Auditor General's office in Lusaka on Tuesday, Fiskaa said corruption was a general problem where no one should give up.

Fiskaa, who was on a two-day tour of some Norway-funded projects in the country, said corruption was one sad way in which the rich enrich themselves more and become more powerful.

“First of all, I would like to say that I'm very much encouraged to see or to hear about all the good work being done in the Auditor General's office.

And I think this is a good example of cooperation between two countries, where we have cooperation between the Norwegian Auditor General's office and the Zambian Auditor General's office,” Fiskaa said.

“And in my view, these are the results. One example is public attention to those cases of possible corruption. And I think it's very important also that people of Zambia really keep the government and public authorities responsible and accountable for the use of public funds.

And we know that the fight against corruption is in every society, in every country; it's an international phenomenon and it's also in my country, Norway.

So, this is a general problem we cannot give up until we have reached our goal of no corruption because also we know that corruption is the way that the people who are already powerful, already rich enrich themselves even more and become even more powerful.

This has an international perspective as well. We know that we have damaging international economic structures that facilitate corruption in countries like Zambia, but in all other countries as well.

We would like to fight corruption also on an international level, I'm thinking of the fight against tax evasion and bank secrecy internationally.”

When asked for her opinion on the Zambian public’s demand that the office of the Auditor General be empowered to prosecute cases of abuse of public resources when they are discovered, Fiskaa supported the idea and said people should debate it.

“That's a proposal that Zambian authorities should take seriously and to consider that proposal. But of course this is not something that I can decide on, so it's a matter of the Zambian authorities to decide on this,” she said. “But I'm sure that organisations and people and civil society organisations will push for this proposal.”

And after inspecting farming projects under Conservation Farming Unit in Kafue's Shimabala area on Monday, Fiskaa observed that there was still less food produced than needed worldwide.

“It is encouraging to see that women are in the lead here. This is a good example of what can be done in the sense of empowering women. Food is unequally shared in the world, there is less food produced than needed worldwide,” said Fiskaa.

And Chifungula has vowed to keep on pushing with the fight against abuse of public resources.
In an interview when Fiskaa visited her office yesterday, Chifungula said the current investigations into the purchase of police motor vehicles were encouraging.

“If I got frustrated then I would actually give up, isn't it? But I don't get frustrated. I keep on pushing and pushing. I'm sure you are beginning to see the results, some of them you are seeing them.

There's action being taken. For instance in our 2007 report, we reported about the importation of those motor vehicles by the Ministry of Home Affairs through Zambia Police. You have been reading about it, action is being taken,” Chifungula said.

“There are people that maybe I can't cite right now, but there's quite a lot of action being taken. One thing that our audits, especially now that we have gone into other areas as well, other parts of Zambia, is that people now because they know that you are there there's that element of fear for public funds. So I can confidently say that there has been a reduction in the number of cases of abuses that we have reported.”

Chifungula said whatever dissatisfactions were there in operations, her office would not be discouraged in any way.

“Remember we have also extended our audit coverage. It is now quite expensive, last time we would audit maybe five, six government ministries and then report. But now we are reporting on almost all of them.

So the coverage is much larger, which means there's a great improvement because if it was as bad as last time, you would have seen actually our reports even being extremely bulky. But there's such a reduction and we are proud of that, but not entirely satisfied,” said Chifungula.

Labels: ANNA CHIFUNGULA, AUDITOR GENERAL, INGRID FISKAA, NORWAY, TRANSPARANCY

posted by MrK @ 5:02 PM