JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Integrity moving to avert corruption

Scruti­ny of statu­to­ry bod­ies, State en­ter­pris­es com­ing

by

20111215

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is mov­ing in the new year to avert cor­rup­tion in T&T.Chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Ken­neth Gor­don an­nounced the new ini­tia­tive dur­ing his first of­fi­cial news con­fer­ence since as­sum­ing of­fice on No­vem­ber 1. The brief­ing was held at the com­mis­sion's of­fice, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion Build­ing, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.Gor­don said: "In Jan­u­ary 2012, we hope to com­mence a pro­gramme to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine statu­to­ry bod­ies and State en­ter­pris­es in or­der to de­ter­mine whether there ex­ist sat­is­fac­to­ry poli­cies and pro­ce­dures to en­sure cor­rup­tion will be pre­vent­ed and de­tect­ed and the pub­lic funds utilised ef­fi­cient­ly."

He said if the ini­tia­tive was suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed next year "we would find our­selves in a po­si­tion where we would per­haps avert a num­ber of things that have been hap­pen­ing."He said there was a pro­vi­sion un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Act Life Act for the com­mis­sion "to mon­i­tor State en­ter­pris­es to en­sure they are op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cient­ly."He stressed that was one of the crit­i­cal ini­tia­tives to be ad­dressed next year.

Gor­don said that was even more crit­i­cal, "par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time when as you know we had an un­for­tu­nate read­ing in the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dex and we must do every­thing pos­si­ble to cor­rect that."He al­so said the time had come for the com­mis­sion to for­mu­late a more cost ef­fec­tive mech­a­nism for the fil­ing of de­c­la­ra­tions by pub­lic of­fi­cials, as re­quired by law.He said the cur­rent mech­a­nism was not cost ef­fec­tive.

"Our ob­ject now is to make this a lot more cost ef­fec­tive," Gor­don added.He said work was ad­vanced with the new de­c­la­ra­tion form, which has to be ap­proved be­fore it could be im­ple­ment­ed.He said the pro­posed sys­tem would al­low for all the de­tails to be sub­mit­ted in the first year of fil­ing but in sub­se­quent years on­ly new in­for­ma­tion would be re­quired to be filed."Our hope is that we can speed­i­ly get the re­quired ap­provals to change not the in­for­ma­tion that is held but the fre­quen­cy in which that in­for­ma­tion is re­peat­ed," Gor­don said.

He al­so spoke of the need to com­plete the reg­u­la­tions for the Act. He said that mat­ter al­so would be ad­dressed in the new year.Gor­don said about 38 com­plaints filed at the com­mis­sion were ex­pect­ed to re­main un­re­solved by the end of the year.De­scrib­ing it as "bad news", Gor­don said there was a back­log of 3,000 de­c­la­ra­tions in T&T.He said, based on his ob­ser­va­tions, there was no need for in­creased fi­nan­cial and oth­er re­sources to run the com­mis­sion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored