Committee sends back President and Cabinet officials

The Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament on Monday sent back a delegation from the Office of the President and Cabinet due to failure to include members of the institutional integrity committee. Since last week, committee members have been meeting officials from government ministries, departments and agencies on the State of IICs. Yesterday, committee…

By Wezzie Gausi:

The Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament on Monday sent back a delegation from the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) due to failure to include members of the institutional integrity committee (IIC).

Since last week, committee members have been meeting officials from government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) on the State of IICs.

Yesterday, committee members was scheduled to meet OPC officials on the same but the meeting ended abruptly.

Committee chairperson Albert Mbawala said people that went to engage committee members were not the ones the committee wanted to meet.

He said committee members wanted to engage members of the IIC and management on how the IIC is dealing with issues of corruption in the workplace.

“It was sad to note that people that came only had one person representing the committee. As such, we had to send them back because we want them to come back with members of the IIC.

“Having a meeting with the people that were present could have killed the whole purpose of why we wanted to meet these committee [members]. So, we have told them to get organised and come back once they are ready,” Mbawala said.

However, the OPC officials told parliamentary committee members that, due to transfers, some members of the committee got transferred to other departments.

They further told committee members that the OPC was in the process of looking for other people to fill in the vacant positions in the IIC.

“We will be coming back once we have a full committee present. We thought that management could have presented the IIC well,” OPC said.

Recently, stakeholders urged the Anti-Corruption Bureau to scrutinise the functionality of IICs in institutions in the country.

IIC’s were introduced with the support of the bureau in order to mainstream the anti-corruption fight within MDAs.