THE Senate has blamed the pervasive poverty in the country and overall economic challenges confronting the nation on corrupt practices perpetuated by the public service.The Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-governmental Agencies, which made this allegation during a visit to the Service Compact (SERVICOM) headquarters yesterday in Abuja, noted that the nation loses about N3 trillion yearly to corrupt practices, including the ghost workers' syndrome, falsification and inflation of contracts, as well as other sharp practices in the civil service.Chairman of the committee, Dahiru Kuta, in his statement, mandated SERVICOM to immediately expose all corrupt Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) of government without further delay.Kuta also bemoaned the state of the nation's aviation sector, blaming the development on succeeding ministers of aviation.He said: 'All the ministers posted to the aviation sector go there to play politics. We cannot run our local or international airline routes because they have been taken over by foreigners'.The committee also charged the agency to be proactive in its fight against service delivery failure in both public and private sectors, stressing that Nigerians were yet to feel the impact of the SERVICOM's activities.In his response, Senior Special Adviser to the President/National Coordinator, SERVICOM, Sylbriks Obriki, said one of the challenges confronting the agency was government's inability to implement evaluation reports on MDAs.Recalling a recent report on the Prisons Service, which scored the latter 'very poor', SERVICOM has carried out several evaluations on MDAs, which are yet to be implemented.The SERVICOM chief, therefore, canvassed for a legislative backing that would grant the power to impose sanctions on defaulting government offices in the country.Obriki said: 'We have been carrying out evaluation of public offices but after that, what happens' We evaluated the Prisons Service and scored it very low, but who will implement the recommendations of the report' We need a law that will give SERVICOM enabling backings to perform effectively and some times, go ahead to impose sanctions on defaulting MDAs', he stated.Obriki also listed poor funding as one of the challenges confronting the agencies.According to him, SERVICOM's mandates are better executed through awareness campaigns and attitudinal reorientation, which processes are capital intensive.Senator Kuta in his response described SERVICOM as an abysmal failure and condemned the government for establishing agencies without any attempt to fund them.His words: 'We condemn in strong terms the urge by the Federal Government to establish agencies it cannot fund. It is always willing to establish agencies only to kill them before they take off'.The senators doubted if the agency was established by law or 'is simply an arm of the Presidency, which could not stand independently'.They alsotasked the SERVICOM chief to come up with genuine initiatives that would aid partial funding of the agency by credible private organisations.
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