HERAT CITY (SW): Officials at the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (IJACMEC) has said that the government has marginalized anti-corruption and that is why the country is always ranked among corrupt countries in the world.
Ahmad Rashid Behrooz, Chief Executive Officer at IJACMEC, said that countering corruption was one of government’s priorities when the government was established but now it seems the issue has been marginalized.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the committee in Herat, Behrooz said that based on their evaluations, Afghanistan is neck-deep in the corruption to the extent that anyone who wants to investigate it would get corrupted as well.
He added that individuals involved in corruption have become master of it that makes it difficult to eradicate corruption by simple campaign.
He said the newly established committee would report on government’s performance in fighting the corruption to the international institutions and responsible bodies.
He said the committee has been active since 2010 in the capital Kabul and has been trying to cover other provinces as well.
He said that five years into their activities, they have proposed 400 recommendations for improving counter-corruption to 30 government and international institutions out of which 80 percent of the recommendations have been implemented and the rest 20 percent have not been implemented yet.
He also said that judicial bodies and High Anti-Corruption Office have been the government institutions, which have had the least cooperation in terms of implementing these recommendations.
Mohammad Asif Rahimi, Governor of Herat, who was also present at the ceremony, blamed insecurity for the marginalized anti-corruption campaign.
The governor said that establishing such committee was vital in the measures against corruption. He added that using technology is also one of the approaches towards fighting corruption in the high ranking institutions where fund flows into.
Although eradicating corruption was one of the major commitments made by previous government and the current one, reports by anti-corruption bodies in the world, suggest that Afghanistan remains one of the three most corrupt countries in the world.
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