LILONGWE-(MaraviPost) – The country’s fight against corruption is far from satisfactory considering the latest ranking assessed yearly by the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI)
which has seen Malawi slipping down eight places from 112 in 2015 to 120 in 2016.
This has not gone well with business captains saying the report will affect their operations when trying to coax international investors into joint business ventures.
The global corruption institution report discloses that Malawi has slipped down from 88 in 2002 to 120 in 2016 attributing it to the massive plunder of public resources dubbed cashgate that occurred between 2012 and 2013.
The corruption index indicates that on a score of 0-100, the country scored 31 which is within the red zone (0-39) of the most corrupt nations worldwide.
Launching the CPI report on Wednesday in the capital Lilongwe, National Integrity Platform (NIP), a grouping of civil society on corruption fight observed that lack of political will in all level.
Boniface Dulani political scientist and researcher of Chancellor College, constituents of University of Malawi (Unima) said efforts to strengthen anti-corruption institutions such as the Ant-Corruption Bureau (ACB) have not been successful.
Dulani agreed with report’s findings that corruption perception in the country was rising and becoming worse saying political interference was a challenge when pursuing fraud cases in public institutions.
“All this starts from the appointments of people into such institutions, knowing that they could be removed anytime makes them align themselves to politicians for fear of persecutions”, said Dulani.
Concurring with Dulani, Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) National Coordinator, Christopher Chiphwanya said top level corruption syndicate remained unregulated and uncontrolled.
But Ministry of Information, Nicholas Dausi who is also government spokesperson while acknowledging aspects of corruption in the country questioned the methodology of the study arguing that Malawian citizen
were not contacted during the research.
Dausi said the report’s findings remain doubtful to government but quickly appealed for consultative efforts from all sectors to address the vice.
