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Rupiah’s govt is now perfecting corruption -Syakalima

Rupiah’s govt is now perfecting corruption -Syakalima
By Patson Chilemba
Wed 28 July 2010, 04:01 CAT

SIAVONGA UPND member of parliament Douglas Syakalima yesterday charged that President Rupiah Banda’s government is now perfecting corruption by the planned removal of the offence of abuse of office from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Act.

Reacting to works and supply minister Mike Mulongoti’s statement that the clause had proved harmful to the management process, Syakalima said the government was up to no good.

“That is now the best way of wanting to perfect corruption because if you want really to remove laws that have been working, they have never disadvantaged anybody, it means that there is something you are up to. They are up to no good,” he said.

Syakalima asked President Banda and his government not to mess up the country in their remaining days in power.

He said the Zambian people would start looking for them after the 2011 elections.

“For some of us we shall pierce that bill until it bleeds to death,” Syakalima said.

He challenged Mulongoti to name anyone who had been criminalized on account of the clause because it had been in the statute books for a long time.

He said there were several people who had been convicted on account of abusing their offices.

“He can’t say that this piece of legislation is criminalizing decision making, no. Make a decision, a proper decision in accordance to the law. Don’t use your office to corruptly deal with government resources. Abuse of office is there, it is meant to deter those who want to get advantage of their own offices,” Syakalima said.

“Don’t take advantage of your office in order to enrich yourself. Don’t take advantage of your office to abuse society. Those offices are meant for good. They are not meant for you to start having deals.”

Syakalima said the law in question did not imply that public service workers could not get into business but that they should be able to explain how they accumulated their wealth, especially if it did not correspond with their incomes.

“People wouldn’t be wrong to ask how you have accumulated those resources. To make matters worse there are those people that don’t even declare. Like the civil servants, they don’t declare anything,” Syakalima said.

“But you see there is nothing criminal about this piece of legislation because I have not heard anybody who has been imprisoned because of this Act, because he was making a decision in government.”

Syakalima said the whole thing about removing the abuse of office clause from the Act was total mischief because people were now preparing themselves to do wrong things.

He noted that the clause was meant to deter people from engaging in corruption.

“Why are there traffic lights? Traffic lights are that man will not just let another person to pass, therefore put traffic lights. Can you say you are criminalizing people or you are just putting traffic lights?” asked Syakalima.

Commenting on the government’s manoeuvres to remove the offence of abuse of office from the revised Act, Mulongoti on Monday said the clause had proved harmful, and should therefore be removed from the Act.

Mulongoti said people were now afraid to make decisions for fear of being criminalized on account of the same clause.

Labels: ACC, CORRUPTION, DOUGLAS SYAKALIMA, MIKE MULONGOTI, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 4:12 AM