Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) has this week launched their Integrity Namibia project which is a three-year programme aimed at tackling corruption in the country, focusing especially on individuals who are deemed to be too politically connected to be held accountable for their dubious activities.
Graham Hopwood, the director of the IPPR, said that one worrying aspect that has emerged more clearly since the exposure of the Fishrot case, is the existence of ‘untouchables’ – people who are considered too politically connected to be arrested or even investigated.
“This situation of impunity cannot be allowed to continue. In response to this situation, we have designed a three-year project to be called Integrity Namibia, which is funded by the US Embassy to the tune of N$3 million. The overall aim of Integrity Namibia is to establish a sustainable National Anti-Corruption Network operating across civil society, private sector, the media, traditional authorities, faith-based organizations, and other non-state actors,” Hopwood explained.
He said the project will involve a national mobilization campaign alongside a series of research-based interventions including publications and other activities on key policy, legal issues and practical issues that will inform the mobilization work. The project will also include the establishment of an online Whistleblower reporting platform.
“We will start by reaching out to various sectors of Namibian society to discuss how they see such a national network operating and what role they could play in a series of consultation meetings and focus group discussions Hopwood noted. This will be followed by bi-annual regional conferences to bring all the possible partners in a national network together,” Hopwood said.
He further stated that the IPPR won’t be neglecting its core function as a think tank and will also be making research-based interventions in the form of publications and activities.
“Finally, in the absence of an official operational whistleblower reporting system, we will be launching our own whistleblower platform to receive reports of corruption and other wrongdoing in a confidential and secure manner. We would like to use this occasion to call on government, as a demonstration of its political will, to explicitly include the costs of setting up a whistleblower protection office in the 2022/23 budget due to be tabled in the coming days,” Hopwood requested.
“The corruption situation in Namibia has become so grave that we need the different sectors of society to stand up. We need the private sector to stand up, we need lawyers to stand up, we need the churches to stand up, we need civil society to stand up, we need academia to stand up. We need sectors that have already been doing a good job, such as the media, to stand up and make a deeper commitment.” Hopwood said.
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