January 14, 2019
By Ibrahim Tarawallie
ACC Commissioner, Francis Ben Kaifala and CHRDI’s Abdul Fatoma exchanging the signed document
The Campaign for Human Rights and Development International (CHRDI) has partnered with Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to help them in their difficult journey to eradicate corruption in the country.
A Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) was on Friday,January 11, 2019, signed between the two bodies, paving the way for them to collaborate in the areas of information management and sharing to help in curbing the menace in the country.
According to CHRDI Chief Executive, Abdul M. Fatoma, the new partnership will culminated into a private sector regulation being put together that will help companies to comply with the ACC act.
“We want to partner with the ACC to continue popularizing the fight against corruption at different levels. We intend to engage the private sector and also at community level to take the fight to the people,” he said.
In this new partnership, Mr. Fatoma stated that his organization will help the ACC to produce a handbook that will be titled: ‘Compliancy and integrity’, which will help companies to know the laws relating to corruption in summary.
Because CHRDI is development social advocacy organization, the Chief Executive said they are working towards promoting transparency and accountability, which is why they believe that ordinary people have to fight corruption they see in their lives.
On his part, ACC Commissioner, Francis Ben Kaifala said: “I am very grateful to Mr. Fatoma and his team as they have been very much persistent and consistent in engaging the commission to see that the fight, which is now more focused in the public sector, is equally brought to the private sector.”
He said one way CHRDI think they can achieve that is to make sure that the right information permeates down to them because they understand what corruption is and their limit and ambit as well.
He disclosed that the two bodies will work on putting together a legislation that would combat corruption in the private sector, which is a requirement under the Anti-Corruption System of the African Union.
He added that Sierra Leone has been lacking behind in that regard because the corruption laws are not too strong when it comes to the private sector.
“This is a welcome partnership. We are supposed to give you all our support as a commission to what you need so that we can produce what is good for the country. Corruption is not just a public issue. In fact it is driven by the private sector,” he noted.
Commissioner Kaifala said the step taken by CHRDI is the right one and assured of providing them all the support they can as they work together to create a more transparent public and private partnership to help launder the image of the country and repositioned it.