The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has since last year been losing members of staff due to resignations.<\/p>\n
The affected sections of the Bureau include investigations, prosecution, corruption prevention and public education.<\/p>\n
The accounts, audit and human resource departments are also not spared.<\/p>\n
ACB Deputy Director General, Reyneck Matemba, confirmed the development in an interview on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very big problem. In fact now, almost every month, somebody is resigning from the Bureau from all the sections. The problem we have now is that in those days the Bureau used to be attractive. The Conditions of Service of the Bureau were more attractive than of most government agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now it is the opposite. People are now trekking to institutions that are offering better salaries and other opportunities including promotions,\u201d Matemba said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cAs of last year, the Bureau had 150 officers, now there are 132. You can see how the figure is going down. The total establishment of the Bureau is about 248. But we know we can\u2019t fill all those vacancies at once. That\u2019s not possible in terms of finances, as well as other considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issue of staff turnover was also raised on Tuesday when the ACB appeared before a cluster of committees scrutinising its budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn total, the Bureau has lost 15 officers in the financial year in which 13 (nine per cent) of the total staff resigned as at 1st July 2015, while two died,\u201d reads a presentation the Bureau made before the committees.<\/p>\n
According to the document, one official is said to have reached retirement age.<\/p>\n
The committees included Legal Affairs; Commissions, Statutory and Authorities and Public Appointments.<\/p>\n
The ACB is currently implementing a five year strategic plan which was launched in 2012. In the strategic plan, the Bureau has seven pillars. Some of them are to increase understanding of the nature and procedures of reporting corruption, to increase public confidence in the fight against corruption and to promote integrity, transparency and accountability.<\/p>\n
Others are to enhance efficiency, and effectiveness of investigations and prosecution of corruption cases.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment over the situation at the Bureau, Secretary in the Department of Human Resource and Development, Blessings Chilabade, on Thursday said the onus is on the Bureau to replace the staff on existing positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ACB has the authority to employ its own staff. Replacing staff cannot be a challenge. It is straightforward since those positions are already budgeted for,\u201d Chilabade said.<\/p>\n
He, however, said it becomes an issue when government agencies would like to have new recruits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat requires asking our office. We have to look at the resources available. On that, we look at critical areas that need human resources,\u201d Chilabade said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has since last year been losing members of staff due to resignations. The affected sections of the Bureau include investigations, prosecution, corruption prevention and public education. The accounts, audit and human resource departments are also not spared. ACB Deputy Director General, Reyneck Matemba, confirmed the development in an interview on Tuesday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26008,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions\/26008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}