By GIDEON NYENDWA
CORRUPTION “takes two to tango” and both parties to the deal should be investigated if the fight against the scourge is to bear fruit, former Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) national secretary Major Richard Kachingwe has said.
Maj Kachingwe said there is need to have a holistic approach to the fight against corruption because the current approach that the government has taken will not take this country anywhere.
Maj Kachingwe said that there was need to change the notion that corruption only exists in public offices and the narrative always distracts investigative wings from following up on the actual corruption.
He said that everyone agrees that corruption was a cost but there was need to make a resolve that everyone must fight corruption in the country, the right way.
Maj Kachingwe said that successive governments have tried to fight corruption in their own way but it was not holistic.
He said that arresting one public officer could not end corruption because there were a lot of people attached that were free that would still steer their corruption agenda forward.
Maj Kachingwe said that there was a need to have an indaba to discuss how the country could handle corruption so that people could come up with ideas especially now that the country has a president who has given a political will to the fight.
He also said that it was very rare in this country to hear that a business man or a contractor has been arrested for corruption because the focus was always on public office bearers.
Maj Kachingwe said that business men are the ones who corrupt public officers but they are walking the streets free.
Meanwhile, he also said it was wrong for the Auditor General (AG) to be exposing scandals of corruption three to four years after the incident had happened.
Maj Kachingwe said the delays to produce AG report on time was the reason why the tendency of brushing out cases keeps on growing in this country, a lot of parastatal companies failed to account for most of the monies they used to spend but no one was talking about it.
