KABUL - The Supreme Court and two ministries on Tuesday rejected as ‘baseless’ recent reports about corruption and bribery of the Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) and the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC).
The MEC in a report has listed ‘a defiant anti-corruption campaign’, political interferences, foreign meddling as main reasons behind corruption vulnerabilities at the Ministry of Mining, Petroleum (MoMP).
In addition, the MEC findings identify weak handling of contracts and political influence in decision making process among factors contributing to corruption in the ministry.
The MEC report says illegal mining, inadequate salaries, weak mining audit, revenue collection, illegal interference of local officials in revenue collection and their involvement in illegal mining are other problems of the ministry.
Separately, the Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) in its report has stated that 4.6 million people in Afghanistan paid $1.7 billion in bribes this year.
The IWA survey said most of the corruption happened in the judiciary, the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Attorney General Office, police, municipality, Parliament and less corruption at schools, universities, hospitals, the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
However, Apex Court spokesman Amanullah Eman along with MoE and MoMP spokespersons rejected the IWA report and said the figures provided in the survey were unclear and misleading.
“The IWA anti-corruption survey is unjust, unprofessional and there is no mention of our achievements. We don’t know on which basis the survey was conducted. We call it incomplete, unprofessional and absurd,” said Eman.
He said in the past four years, 341 judges and prosecutors had been arrested over alleged corruption and their cases were being investigated by the authorities concerned.
He said 280 cases had been addressed during the period and 400 others had been entered into the database, a process still ongoing.
Nooria Nazhat, MoE spokesperson, said the IWA survey was inaccurate as it had no mention of the ministry. She said the interviewed persons did not have complete information regarding the MoE.
Nazhat said the MoE was fighting corruption within as a priority and had huge achievements in this regard.
Abdul Qadir Mustafa, MoMP spokesman, said the ministry was working on ‘a strong’ reform agenda. He rejected the MEC report and complained it carried no mention of the ministry’s achievements. (Pajhwok)