Kabwe District Commissioner (DC) Jonathan Kapungwe has said it is unfortunate that people in the country looked at politicians and government officials as the most corrupt people and yet the scourge is rife at every stage of human life.
Speaking when he officially opened a two day Transparent International Zambia (TIZ) workshop in Kabwe today, Mr. Kapungwe said the fight against corruption should involve everybody.
He said the media was also involved in corruption through the alleged distortion of information and therefore there was need for the media to also check itself in its duties.
TIZ has invited community based organizations (CBO) to attend a two day corruption awareness workshop from Mumbwa, Serenje, Mkushi, Kapiri Mposhi, Chibombo and Kabwe at Namukuyu Lodge.
Mr. Kapungwe praised TIZ for such a workshop saying community leaders would play a vital role in their respective places in the fight against corruption to ensure that the scourge was stamped out at community level.
‘People should not think it is only politicians and government officials involved in corruption. It is not so because everywhere you go even in cooperative societies corruption is there. All it requires is a sense of responsibility by everyone to stamp it out where-ever it shows its ugly face,’ said Mr. Kapungwe.
He said it was imperative that the approach of combating corruption was changed from the legalistic approach though important, to community capacity building in order to empower them to engage policy makers and government institutions in demanding effective and enhanced social accountability.
Mr. Kapungwe hoped that the workshop would equip CBOs with skills on how local communities could engage policy makers on issues of resource utilization and accountability in various community projects and challenged participants to actively participate in the workshop.
He said sustainable development could only be guaranteed if communities were actively involved in the implementation of projects in their communities.
Mr. Kapungwe further noted that there had been several reports of poor control systems and lack of community monitoring capacity in some of the local community projects such that the individuals that failed to utilize and account for public resources went scot free.
He explained that this was because the communities were not empowered with the capacity to hold the individuals accountable and hoped the workshop would empower the participants effectively for them to monitor the projects.
ZANIS
It is difficult not to suspect politicians, for thier business is to tell lies!
BaKapungwe, even you, you “eat”.
But that is exactly what they are you can not change what already is sorry.
You would have been correct if you made that statement in UK or America BUT Zed!!, you know very well that all politicians in Zed a corrupt, the most corrupt moron who bring our country down.
Why then u cant give Zed students their baggage allowances?