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Church will support genuine corruption fight - Fr Chisanga

Church will support genuine corruption fight - Fr Chisanga
By Darious Kapembwa in Kitwe and Kaombe Chimpinde in Lusaka
Thu 21 June 2012, 13:22 CAT

THE Church will support every genuine efforts aimed at stamping out corruption at all levels of society, says Fr Patrick Chisanga. In a statement, Fr Chisanga who is the head of the Fransiscan priests in Zambia saidZambia needed to reclaim the standards of human dignity by stamping out the scourge.

"As a Church, the living body of Christ, our hearts continue to bleed at the sight of injustice against the poor and vulnerable of society," Fr Chisanga said.

"We therefore demand zero-tolerance to corruption in our localities, public offices, work places and at all levels of leadership in our country," Fr Chisanga said.

"In this same regard, we usually repeat the same message that the quality of life in our country continues to go down because of the selfishness of a few individuals who continue to steal from the poor. Such are people who become apprehensive at any mention of the fight against corruption because corruption has become their acceptable standard of life and way of survival," said Fr Chisanga.

He said it would be a great injustice for the church to leave the fight against corruption to a few politicians.

He said the fight against corruption was a moral issue that needed to be fought viciously from all angles.

Meanwhile, Ng'andu Magande says corrupt elements were enemies of every government and its leader.

And Magande has advised President Michael Sata to have more friends who support his anti-corruption fight.

President Sata recently said his hard anti-corruption stance had made him unpopular among some 'powerful' corrupt elements in the country.

But Magande said the majority of Zambians wanted to support President Sata and the government in the fight against corruption and wanted the crusade to be accompanied with results.

President Sata said the government was working extremely hard and were becoming unpopular because corrupt people were very powerful.

But Magande advised President Sata to have more friends who could help him achieve his goals to rid the country of corruption.

"If you have enemies and you know them, the best thing is to have more friends who can help you. What I think the majority of people would want to do is to support the President on the fight against corruption," Magande said.

"Zambians can only continue supporting him if they see visible things he is doing for them. They will say 'as far as we are concerned, we are happy with the current government because they are doing this and that for us'. If you just keep taking sides every day talking about corruption, the other people who are not corrupt and who are in the majority don't see what else you are doing, then they can't help you to fight corrupt elements."

He said the war against corruption must be fought side by side with improving the general wellbeing of Zambians."As the government, you have to fight on all fronts…Because you are fighting for the whole country, all fronts have to be safeguarded," said Magande.

Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, PATRICK CHISANGA

posted by MrK @ 4:17 PM