By Crispina Cummings
Head of Sierra Leone’s anti-corruption commission, Joseph Kamara, has promised parliamentarians and its core of trainee pressmen that he will make corruption “a high risk and low profit venture” in the country. He told a two-day workshop for members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that the commission was re-strategising, putting in place new structures to make graft one of the biggest dangers anybody would dare. Kamara said if they failed to take a new dimension to tackle the scourge, the president would also fail in his Agenda for Prosperity that should benefit the general good of society instead of a privileged few. “In our National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2014-2019 the commission will approach the corruption fight from a citizen’s point of view and also take economic and physical approaches,” he said, adding that actions would include freezing the assets of corrupt officials, imposing a travel ban on them and making sure their pockets felt the pinch. He said the commission wanted a generation of people that would stand for what they believed in and fight against “wilful and criminal neglect”. The ACC boss urged the current review process to ensure that security of the commission was embedded in the final copy of the Constitution, lest the country would wake up one day and the ACC was out of existence. He also called on oversight committees to take ACC staff along when they embarked on provincial tours. Clerk of Parliament, Ibrahim Sesay, expressed delight and encouraged other ministries, departments and agencies to follow the fine examples. President of the journalists association, Kelvin Lewis, called on the commission to work closely with the gallery. © Politico 22/08/13
