Nothing to celebrate yet – anti-graft NGO
By Tony Nkhoma
CELEBRATING the reported reduction in corruption in the public service amounts to self-comfort while sitting on a pile of evil, the Community Action Against Corruption (CAAC) has said.
CAAC executive director Brightone Tembo said the United Party for National Development (UPND) should not celebrate the perceived reduction because there was still rampant corruption across all government and quasi-government institutions and systems.
Tembo said corruption had become a preserve of the elite who had political influence and were able to loot State resources with impunity.
“We are also very much concerned by celebration of the so-called reduction in public sector corruption, while creating a picture of comfort with the increase in private sector financial illegalities,” he said.
Tembo said only influential people with inner connections in government, who were plundering huge sums of money, were the participants in public sector corruption.
“We believe the reduction in cases of public sector corruption indicated in the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) Report of 2024 may not be directly due to any anti-corruption measures put in place so far, but may be attributed to the fact that currently, corruption has become a preserve of the elite people who have political influence and access to state resources with impunity,” he said.
Tembo said currently there was no genuine corruption fight which could make those involved account for their illegal activities.
“Ordinary petty corrupt people currently have no access to State resources,” he said.
Zambians should understand the fact that private sector corruption could not thrive with the increased public sector corruption because there was always a link between the two forms of corruption.
“We are very much concerned by celebration of the so-called reduction in public sector corruption while creating a picture of comfort with the increase in private sector financial illegalities,” Tembo said.
He challenged the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) and the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) to explain to the nation why the convictions in FIC’s report were only before the year 2024.
“We, believe the latest FIC report captured only corrupt activities that occurred in 2024, the period under review, but to our surprise all the corruption related convictions and forfeitures that took place in 2024 were for cases that were in court before 2024,” Tembo said.
He said the inclusion of convictions of cases that were already in court as early as 2022 was misleading and was aimed at boosting the statistics of corruption status under 2024 in order to project a positive narrative of the corruption fight in the period under review.
