Anticorruption Unit chairman Om Yentieng said yesterday that officials were in the final stages of drafting a sub-decree to guide the unit’s corruption-fighting strategies, bringing the unit a step closer to being fully operational.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a USAID-sponsored three-day workshop on strategic planning for members of the Anticorruption Unit yesterday, Mr Yentieng said that the sub-decree would create operational guidelines for both the unit and the National Council for Anticorruption.
The two bodies, which together comprise the Anticorruption Institution, have recently been created under the Anticorruption Law, which was passed by the National Assembly in March.
“Now, we are drafting the sub-decree on the operation of the Anticorruption Institution,” Mr Yentieng said, adding that the roughly 10-page document would be handed to the Council of Ministers after the conclusion of the workshop.
Mr Yentieng, who is also a member of the council, said last month that the first action taken by the unit would be to enforce the Anticorruption Law’s requirement for selected public officials to privately declare their assets and debts.
A draft copy of the Anticorruption Unit’s three-year strategic plan says the goal of the unit is “to develop a sustainable reduction of corrupt behavior for the purpose of improving economic and social development in Cambodia and develop a society free of corruption.”
Among the draft strategy’s “activities” to meet anticorruption objectives are to “introduce adequate incentive and responsibility mechanisms in public service areas with particularly high corruption risks” and to establish government briefing sessions on anticorruption for journalists and civil society organizations.
Speaking at the yesterday’s launch of the workshop, USAID Program Office Director Laurie de Freese said it was an important time for the Anticorruption Institution.
“A window of opportunity has been opened with the passage of the Anticorruption Law and the establishment of the National Council,” she said.
Ms de Freese encouraged the government to hold an inter-ministerial conference on anticorruption measures where each government ministry and agency could begin to develop its own anticorruption plan.
