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{
    "id": 976823,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/976823/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 257,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Farhiya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13179,
        "legal_name": "Farhiya Ali Haji",
        "slug": "farhiya-ali-haji"
    },
    "content": "ways in which other people have fought corruption in terms of participation, the budgeting process and by training the communities to comment on proposed budgets. I talked about budget padding in one of my other corruption submissions. This means that by the time the budget is done by the Treasury, very influential bodies have lobbied. The prices are sometimes determined even before the bidding process by people with interest. Involving the community helps in ensuring that whatever is costed and budgeted is a close estimate and not just people throwing in figures that include their own corruption. Madam Temporary Speaker, Transparency International also successfully advocated for adoption of one of the world’s strongest rights to information laws in the Maldives by putting pressure on local members of parliament via a Short Message Service (SMS) campaign. They also did this by having communities monitor their own projects. In a survey that was conducted by KPMG in Hong Kong in 1996, corruption was estimated to be worth 230 million Hong Kong Dollars. The consultancy felt that this was an underestimate. Most of the corruption that was happening was under procurement. Another two per cent and 15 per cent were under businesses. People assume that corruption should only be eliminated in the government. Even businesses, in order for them to thrive, they need a corruption-free environment. Corruption is not documented anywhere, and as a business person, you need to cover your costs. The cost of corruption is also included in the pricing of commodities. Therefore, you cannot overemphasize how some of these things affect us. Madam Temporary Speaker, in Afghanistan when the fight against corruption became successful, they realized that they saved up to US$270 million annually. There was also another country that saved up to US$1.7 million through discontinuation of salary payments. That happened in this country in terms of security forces. We know that there were so many people who were on the payroll of the security forces. Therefore, the government in this country saved a lot of money by doing a head count of security officers as one of the measures of fighting corruption. In Guinea, they saved US$1.7 million by just doing a head count of government officials. Despite passing all these laws, the idea of having separation of ethics and anti- corruption is welcome. Sometimes you cannot legislate behavior. The best thing is to start training children from kindergarten about the immorality around corruption. That way, people will know that if you do corruption, then you have less success in life. Madam Temporary Speaker, we need to stop looking inwardly at ourselves, fearing that we might become victims of this law. We should instead should think about what is good for this county. This is the Bill to deal with, on the issue of corruption. This will not allow us to recover the loot. However, it will enable the institutions that are mandated to carry out lifestyle audit to arrest the ‘big’ people. This will act as a deterrent and those thinking about corruption will stop. This is because right now, people can even corrupt their way into the justice system. This Bill provides that people’s income and liabilities will be checked and they should explain the difference. So, this simplifies the process of tackling corruption in a major way. It will take the fight against corruption to the next level. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}