Newsletter

 The purpose of this blog is to build knowledge on the importance of community involvement in the fight aganist corruption in Uganda. I consider the machinery that is mandated to fight corruption to be several parts of a whole system. I believe that for this system to work there has to be coperation, cordination and active involvement of all parts. The system is made up of several departments put in place by the Constitution of Uganda (1995), repective Acts of Parliament and adjoining regulations. These departments take their work seriously to protect the resources that belong to the people, however, there is little involvement of the people in protecting their own resources. I have worked in the field of anti corruption and i have seen how much the people are an invaluable resource in fighting corruption. I feel that to be able to successfuly be rid of the cancer of corruption it is important to involve the people as part of the system in fighting corruption.

I would like to commend those who are deligently fighting this fight and i encourage you to fight on. I am very encouraged by the progress so far in encouraging the communities to take part in creating a corruption free environment. There have been many different programs ran by different departments and civil society such as radio talk shows, open forums (Bimeza), school and youth programs, anti corruption literature for children like book covers and calenders. The most recent development is the Baraza. This is a new innovation that i discovered on the start of this project.

The Baraza is a response channel that is designed to strengthen the people's involvement in monitoring and evaluation of the projects and resources that are implements by government. Its sustainability is dependent on the people's involvement and their participation will increase government responsiveness to the people's desires and promote good governance. The strength of the Baraza is that it is decentralised down to the local people who hold the government sevices accountable for funds disbursed for projects according to workplans in place.

I would encourage the people of Uganda to embrace the Baraza and make use of it to hold the people they elect and government officers, who are there to serve them, accountable for their actions. It is important for politicians and government officials not to develop a feeling of safety but to always know that someone is watching and when puts his hands in government coffers action will be taken aganist him. I also encourage the people to make use of anti corruption departments in their districts to report cases of corruption and abuse of office and ensure that they follow up for action to be taken. Government offices and civil society are there for the people and all they need to do is ask for help.

I would like to thank those who have contributed to this news letter and your responses are below. I encourage you to continue to take part in this forum so as we fight this cancer called corruption and build a corruption free environment for our children and grand children.

Community participation in the fight aganist corruption

Micheal
The IGG Act 2002 in Uganda provides a comprehensive definition of corruption but in a simplistic form it means a form of behavior which departs from ethics, morality, tradition , law and civic value. A number of institutions are legally empowered in Uganda to fight corruption but they look more at the enforcement measures rather than the preventive but prevention is better than cure. Indeed meaningful achievements will be made if we involve the community participation. The struggle is meaningless as longer as the community is sympathetic to and /or glorifies the corrupt people and perpetuates complacency. There is therefore need to refocused our strategy on preventive measures by involving the community participation by doing the following;

Training the community on the adverse impact corruption has thereby creating an attitude change and in the long run the community will stop holding the corrupt people in high esteem. Use the community based organization/ societies to also monitor the utilization of public funds. The government is already doing this through the civil societies but the CSO need to be supported rather than being looked at as detractors of the government program. Support of the various NGOs in holding the government and the public officials accountable and transparent in their actions. Freedom of the press so that they report on actions of the public officials without fear or favour. Create civil society watchdogs who should be rewarded for their sacrifice. Reward the community and especially those who report corrupt cases leading to recovery of the public funds. Employ participatory country diagonistic surveys. Oversight by parent teacher association to monitor the activities of the schools management team.


Moses


Community participation in the fight against corruption in Uganda.

The fight against corruption in Uganda is facing an unprecedented challenge. There is a consensus that corruption is slowly but surely eroding the achievements of the current government and hindering the development of the country.

The current regime has set up a number of independent institutions with power to investigate, arrest, prosecute convict the corrupt but these institutions have not lived up to the expectations of the majority.

The problem can largely be attributed to the political will to punish the corrupt and the lack of community participation in the fight against corruption.

The issue of elected leaders not giving guidance in the fight against corruption can really be linked to the people who elect them. The corrupt who amass a lot of wealth and share the loot with the electorate are regarded highly and praised as achievers. The non corrupt who fail to make a lot of money are regarded as failures.

Hence the need to cause the change in the mentality of the voters to take keen interest in knowing the sources of income of their leaders.

The Access to Information act 2005 and The Leadership Code Act 2002 should be used to bring the culprits of the ill gotten wealth to book.

The formation of the anti-corruption division of the high court to specifically handle corruption, embezzlement, causing financial loss, abuse of office, money laundering, bank forgeries and theft is a good indicator to show that the government is interested in bringing the corrupt to book.

In a fire fighting way and to save face the president has been setting up commissions of inquiry in the sectors that receive a high percentage of the national cake. A number of commissions are running concurrently in the sectors of Education, Health and Works among others. The public will wait to see action after reports on these inquiries have been presented to the president.

Parliament which has the constitutional mandate of Legislative, Representational, Oversight should play a bigger role in the fight against corruption. The committees of Parliament which are primarily charged with corruption such as the Public Accounts Committee, The local Government Accounts Committee and the committee on Commissions, Statutory authorities and State enterprises have not done much to galvanize people in the fight against corruption. Parliament which is a representation of the people should take a lead in mobilizing the citizen to demand for accountability from the executive.

The government is engaging the community in demanding for accountability through the establishment of Public Fora (Barazas) to promote accountability and Transparency at sub county level. It is believed this will create demand by the community for public transparency in the fight against corruption at the grassroots levels.

Corruption is a cancer which should be fought from all angles and using all the arsenal at government’s disposal. The community should also demand for accountability through their vote. We need to do much in ensuring that the citizens are involved in this fight.

Edmond


stop crying about low blog response. Let the IT specialist advise you here. Did you know 80% of Ugandan people are afraid of cyberspace. Did you know the 20% who are not afraid spend 80% of their cyber time on face book, yahoo and familiar sites such as hi5 etc? So if you want results you have to be patient.

Make your blog a place where people generally express their opinions (corruption & related stuff,)

Bring corruption down to our simple minds. People seem to think corruption entails eating money. But Wap! How about influence peddling, illicit profiteering, community manipulation and community resource commandeering, state capture and the likes. Get down to the aspects of corruption that piss off the community, then they will begin to vent. Corruption is actually growing faster in the private sector. in the private sector it is legal to influence peddle, and we make such provisions in our books of accounts, they call it corporate imprest. the corruption thing has many facets, so as you blog widen thy scope. But patience my friend. Try and get media types, activists on your blog and it will get busy with so many people from allover africa.