ZANU PF Member of Parliament for Bikita South, Energy Mutodi says the country is losing much through in that corrupt Government officials are spending their loot outside the country.
Commenting on the Anti Corruption Bill, in parliament yesterday, Mutodi said if the loot is spent in the country it would help creating jobs.
“They do a lot of investments in other countries. It is not corruption money that they use in Zimbabwe, otherwise it may have helped in some way to create jobs and even to enrich their own families.
“It is actually money that they take out of the country so that it then benefits people of those host countries. So, it is something that we need to fight seriously on a united front and ensure that we end this scourge as it is draining the resources that are supposed to benefit us as a country.
“What we note Madam Speaker is that corrupt Zimbabweans, after siphoning money from either the public service or local authorities, take this money out of the country to build mansions.
They do a lot of investments in other countries. It is not corruption money that they use in Zimbabwe, otherwise it may have helped in some way to create jobs and even to enrich their own families.
“It is actually money that they take out of the country so that it then benefits people of those host countries. So, it is something that we need to fight seriously on a united front and ensure that we end this scourge as it is draining the resources that are supposed to benefit us as a country,” he said.
Mutodi pointed out that in its prevention mechanisms, the Commission proposed some compliance checks, training programmes and there are awareness programmes to ensure that people are aware of the areas where corruption is happening, and that they are able to confidently report.
He also proposed that the country should implement some corruption prevention prizes whereby the people who report corruption end up being given some prizes for alerting authorities to take action.
“Such practice will encourage those people who have been sitting on the fence and saying we have been reporting corruption, but have not been able to benefit anything out of it. Such people will then be able to take part and contribute to the reporting and ending of corruption,” he said.
He added that the report also noted that there was need for research in terms of how corruption has affected economic growth and that he agrees with this report in a great way.
“We need to ensure that we know the correlation between the corrupt practices and economic growth. We know that corruption has a tendency of affecting our economic growth and to hinder us from attaining our targets in terms of job opportunities and education achievements. So, we have got to ensure that we support research in this sector.
“We may actually need to come up with a fund to support a Master’s Degree and PHD thesis on corruption research, for instance on how corruption has affected our economy for a certain period of time maybe between this period and that period.
“Such research will be used as a starting point to further unearth other avenues that may help us to understand how to deal with corruption,” he added.
Zwnews
