The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has renewed the fight against graft with vigor despite operating under difficult circumstance.
The commission has 780 cases they were expected to investigate and have them ready for prosecution yet it only has 200 investigators across the country against a staff establishment of 1500 employees in this cadre.
This is why the EACC Education and Media sensitization officer,Pamela Jepkemei told a training forum for 30 journalists organized by the commission in Kisumu that the war on graft required a multi-sectoral approach.
Jepkemei appealed to the media to join EACC who are currently undertaking the corruption risk assessment and help the institution seal the existing corruption loopholes.
She explained that some corruption cases required that the investigators cross the border into the neighbouring countries just to ensure they attain the minimum threshold in terms of gathering evidence.
“This is why corruption cases sometimes take too long for investigators to get adequate evidence to sustain successful prosecution in the courts of law,” she explained.
Jepkemei said the media plays an important role and so should continue mainstreaming ethics and anti-corruption messaging in their programmes, radio talk-shows to effectively curb the negative perceptions about EACC.
“As you dialogue with the target audiences, please impart knowledge on corruption prevention so as to enlist the public support in the war,” she urged.
She argued that greed was mostly to blame for the many corruption cases apart from the challenges attributed to globalisation, internationalisation and democratisation.
Jepkemei further singled out data collected by the EACC revealing that issues of integrity stood at 72 per cent while accountability stood at 50.3 per cent and curiously, patriotism had a paltry 23.8 per cent thus a major concern.
At the end of the training forum, media practitioners and the EACC team came up with an effective way forward to rejuvenate the fight against graft across the country.
