The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has said corruption is affecting every sector of the country.
The bureau’s ACB’s senior public relations officer Egrita Ndala made the remarks on Tuesday after a daylong training at Hapuwani Village Lodge in Mulanje.
She said there is need to join hands in the fight against corruption claiming it is a very serious challenge in Malawi since it affects every sector and almost every individual though people don’t know they are affected in any way or the other.
“Corruption is a very serious challenge in our country because it affects every sector and every individual although some people may feel that they are not affected but in real sense they are affected in one way or the other,” Ndala said.
The training attracted 23 reporters who are members of Blantyre Press Club but from different media houses.
According to the bureau, they thought of conducting this training knowing that reporters have a great role in the fight against corruption in the country.
Ndala said she was impressed with the way reporters reacted during the training adding that the reporters need to have knowledge of corruption, its causes and also symptoms so that they should not complicate things when reporting.
“This was a very important training. You know as ACB we depend on various stakeholders for the work in the fight against corruption to be effective and one such stakeholder is the media. The media has a very important role in the society where people will hear what you report and they take it as a gospel truth,” Ndala said.
She further added that the bureau is also engaging the youths saying being majority of the Malawi’s population as well they has a great task in the fight against corruption.
In a separate interview, Blantyre Press Club president Blessings Kanache said he was so thankful on behalf of the club for the training claiming it has sharpened their knowledge in reporting corruption cases.
He said issues of corruption are very complex and for someone to report effectively there is need to have technical know-how of what corruption really means and other important terms.
“As Blantyre Press Club we would like to thank the Anti-Corruption Bureau for coming up with this particular training because we know that from now onwards there are several steps that we will be following now in terms of how we can protect whistleblowers as we have learnt during the training,” Kanache said.
He however asked ACB to keep on doing such trainings and he since invited ACB’s Ndala to attend the club’s Annual General Meeting next month in Mangochi so that she should further train other reporters who did not make it to this training
It’s even this hapiwani was built thru corrupt means