Govt concerned about high level of corruption in service - Sali

Alhaji Isa Sali, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federal, said in Abuja on Thursday that the Federal Government was concerned about the high level of corruption in both the public and private sectors.Sali made the remark at an interactive session of Heads of Finance and Accounts, Administration, and Chairmen and Secretaries of the Anti-corruption units (ACTUs) of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with the Chairman of ICPC, Mr Ekpo Nta.To address the problem, he said the government had decided to put its house in order by repositioning the activities of the MDAs.``If we play our own role and do our best it will impact on the private sector,'' Sali said, adding that government had gone far in its bid to reposition the ACTUs.He also said the issues of staffing and funding which were militating against the effective functioning of the ACTUs, were being attended to.Sali said the Federal Executive Council had approved that specific budget heads for ACTUs would be put in the 2013 budget as part of efforts to ensure that the activities of the units were properly funded.The Head of Service was represented by Alhaji Ibrahim Nikau, the Director, Management and Inspectorate Department in his office.Earlier, Nta, the Chairman of ICPC, had expressed concern over the failure of some MDAs to furnish the Pension Administrators with complete information about members of their staff.He said that as a result of this, the money deducted from the salaries of the staff was lying idle at the Central Bank as Pencom did not have the complete information about the staff to remit the appropriate amount to Pension Administrators. ``Due to poor documentation by MDAs, remittances are blocked and when they are blocked, they do not attract interest.''Nta, however, said that there had been an appreciable improvement in the behavior of the MDAs after ``we organised a workshop in Kaduna to educate them on the need to ensure proper documentation of their staff''.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some of the 15 Anti Corruption Units present at the occasion complained of lack of office accommodation and money to run their offices.
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