She made the remarks in Mangochi on Thursday during Institutional Integrity Committees (IICs) 7th forum for ministries, departments, agencies and local authorities under the theme “IICs re-engineered for Anti-corruption fight’.
“We are engaging the Treasury to make sure that there is one percent allocation to IICs to allow them to intensify fight against corruption in their respective institutions,” said Banda.
Banda observed that fight against corruption in most public institutions is not satisfactory.“We are not where we supposed to be and nothing much has been achieved in fighting corruption in public institutions but we are still hopeful that we can still do something about it,” she said.
Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director General, Martha Chizuma has since called on IICs to mainstream anti-corruption fight in the public institutions in the best interest of the country.
“We are in the process of building a new Malawi free from corruption and we cannot achieve this if IICs are not directly involved,” she added.
Chizuma further called on the IICs to take the fight against corruption seriously by ensuring integrity in public institutions as mandated by National Anti-Corruption Strategy.
The ACB in collaboration with other stakeholders is developing a lifestyle audit manual to ensure transparent and accountable personnel in the public sector.
“We are developing a lifestyle manual which is a powerful instrument to ensure greater transparency in the public sector,” she said, adding that the life style audit will be one of effective tools to check corruption among public officials.
The meeting in Mangochi drawn representatives of IICs from ministries, departments, agencies and all district councils in the country whose main role under the National Anti-Corruption Strategy is to mainstream ant-corruption fight in public institutions apart from ensuring integrity in the public sector.
In the recent Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Malawi has been ranked on position 110 out of 180 countries.