By: Martina George, Communications Officer, ACC
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has engaged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in an inception meeting on the adoption of Ethics and Integrity Scorecard that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is set to introduce. The Scorecard is a Prevention Tool that will be employed to track Compliance and Integrity Remedial Actions within the various MDAs. The meeting which was attended by government officials, representatives from different institutions, took place on Tuesday 3rd October, 2023 at the Integrity House, Conference Room, 3rd Floor Tower Hill, Freetown.
Making his opening remarks, Deputy Commissioner ACC, Augustine Foday Ngobie stated that the ACC is charged with the responsibility to control corruption in Sierra Leone as a fundamental mandate. This he said informs the established working relationship with various MDAs, as an incentive to achieve and maximize this mandate. He emphasized the need for MDAs to employ internal corruption prevention strategy.
“Our common interest is when globally Control of Corruption assessment is done, and Sierra Leone performs very well like we have been highly rated especially in the past 5 years. The MCC scorecard have been rating Sierra Leone with an excellent grade, which is something you and I can boost of”, he averred. He furthered that the Commission has been conducting Systems Reviews, proffering recommendations and has developed Compliance manual.
The ACC Deputy Commissioner however maintained that the Commission wants to see which of the institutions have been complying with those recommendations noting that, this informs the development of the Ethics and Integrity Scorecard questionnaire, which will be provided to MDAs. He further said that this is to be completed and returned to the Commission, to be analyzed and presented to the people of Sierra Leone, highlighting institutions that are complaint.
Director of Corruption Prevention, ACC, Rashid Turay, in his statement noted that the Commission is responsible to review practices and procedures in MDAs, with the view to identifying gaps in practices and procedures, and proffer recommendations to improve on service delivery. He furthered that the Commission had been constrained on doing a comparative analysis of the various systems reviewed, but this scorecard is designed to address these gaps.
Samuel Muti Marah Esq., Deputy Director, Corruption Prevention, ACC, dilated on the methodology of the scorecard which he described as an integrity assessment tool aimed at assessing the institutions’ framework to prevent corruption and promote integrity. He disclosed that the scorecard will be a product of a questionnaire divided into three thematic areas; Management Culture and Structure, Administrative Systems in place and Financial Management Systems. He concluded that the overall objective of the Integrity and Ethics Scorecard is to allow individual institutions to understand and work within their established instruments and framework, and to have a very effective administrative structure that would prevent corruption.
Questions and answers, contributions and suggestions formed part of the engagement.
