01/01/2021
01/01/2021
Specialized center for risk management eyed
KUWAIT CITY, Dec 31: The report of the “Government Performance Follow-up Team during the Corona Crisis” recommended the application of all rules in the public sector to ensure the transparency and credibility of government procedures, and called for the establishment of an independent and specialized center for risk management.
The report issued by the Public Authority for Combating Corruption ‘Nazaha’, in cooperation with the Kuwaiti Transparency Society, indicated the need to strengthen the principle of partnership and activate the role of civil society, and to seriously review the pending problems, especially the demographics, and to give confidence to the national component that has proved its efficiency during the crisis.
Nazaha issued the report at a press conference held at its headquarters, in the presence of the Nazaha Deputy Secretary-General for Prevention, Engr Abrar Al-Hammad, Chairman of the Kuwaiti Transparency Society Majed Al-Mutairi, and the Head of the Government Performance Follow-up Team during the Corona Crisis, Vice- President of the Kuwaiti Transparency Society Dr. Fahd Al-Raqeeb. For her part, Engr Abrar Al-Hammad affirmed Nazaha’s cooperation with civil society organizations comes from “our belief in the importance of the role that civil society plays in promoting integrity and combating corruption, which was translated into the initiatives of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2019-2024, especially with regard to strengthening” what she called “the complementarities between the efforts of the public sector and civil society in this area.
Objectives
Al-Hammad said, one of the main objectives of forming the team and issuing the report is to enhance the importance of the concept of integrity and transparency in all governmental procedures, whether administrative or health, and to ensure that they conform to the requirements, recommendations and international practices, in addition to strengthening the societal oversight role and empowering civil society organizations and overcoming obstacles, if any, for the sake of effectively playing its role, promoting and exercising the right to access to information, which most of the authorities responded with very positively, and this enabled the team to perform its tasks to the fullest.
She explained that the experience of forming a team from a civil society and a government agency to follow up and evaluate government performance is the first of its kind, and what resulted from the team’s work in terms of monitoring and evaluation, whether for deficiency sites or areas of creativity and excellence included in the report, would serve the reform process by developing public services on the one hand and developing the risk and crisis management system on the other hand.
She drew attention to the importance of the principle of transparency in general and amid the Corona pandemic and emergency crises in particular; its positive impact on controlling the crisis, containing its repercussions and creating confidence in government performance, in addition to the importance of practicing integrity, in behavior and thought, and adopting governance in light of global crises under the banner of integrity.
She expressed her gratitude to every government agency that showed its cooperation in this experience and to all front lines workers and volunteers during the pandemic. For his part, the head of the team, Dr. Fahd Al-Raqeeb, said this work has many positive aspects, and as it is known in the corruption theory that one of the ribs of corruption is during crises time, natural disasters and the spread of epidemics, it breeds environment for greedy souls.
By Fares Al-Abdan Al-Seyassah Staff