THE Ethics
Secretariat Commissioner, Retired Justice Harold Nsekela says that next
year, the filling in and submission of
assets and liabilities
declaration forms will go online.
He said the move follows a request by most diplomats who find the online option more convenient.
"Given changing
technologies, starting January next year, we will go online; In fact, we
had intended to test the system as a pilot project this month, but some
technical drawbacks let us down," he said.
Justice Nsekela
said they tested the effectiveness of the system with the internal staff
and it worked well but the secretariat will officially announce its
adoption after completion of licensing formalities.
"All preliminaries
had been completed, but as we were about to start a pilot testing the
system, we were told that it had to be licensed. We are working on it
and by January, we will be ready and we will test it with a few leaders
to see if it works appropriately, "said the Ethics Commissioner.
Addressing a media
briefing session early this week, Justice Nsekela said with only one
week to go before the deadline for submission of assets and liabilities
declaration forms, only 17 per cent of public leaders had complied with
the requirement.
Justice Nsekela
categorically stated that there would be no deadline extension, and
urged the remaining 83 per cent to do so within the timeframe or appear
before ethics councils for sanctions.
He expressed dismay
over the poor response in the submission of the forms in question,
saying out of 13,699 leaders, only 2,369 had made submissions by
December 20.
He stressed that the leaders should fill in accurate details of their assets and liabilities in the 18-page form.
"Filling the form
in a last minute rush and under pressure is not a good thing and may in
most cases result in skipping vital details. We must strive for truth
and integrity when undertaking the task," he stressed.
The commissioner
said the thrust was to implement the Public Leadership Code of Ethics
Act, No. 13 of 1995 (Chapter 398), specifically to monitor the ethical
behavior and conduct of public leaders.
Justice Nsekela
noted that filling in the declaration form was mandatory for every
public leader stated in the Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act, as it
is a legal and constitutional requirement.
He explained that
fast growing economic development can be attributed to ethics adherence,
and as such, failure by public leaders to submit declaration forms was
compromising the efforts.
"Leaders must be
guided by the rule of law without force or pressure and so submission of
the declaration forms must be done in accordance with the rules. Those
who fail to meet the deadline should not blame anyone, as we have been
issuing reminders periodically," he stated.
The commissioner
noted that he had been sharing information on promotion and enforcement
of ethical principles and ethics which are obligatory requirements to be
observed by all public leaders in the course of implementing their
official responsibilities as per the Public Leadership Code.
The aim of imposing
the principles is to enhance public confidence of the integrity of
public leaders in the government's decision-making process.
No comments:
Post a Comment