Africa-Press – Tanzania. ZANZIBAR Catholic Bishop Augustine Shao has challenged parents to raise their children with a culture of transparency and accountability to help build a society of total translucency and responsibility.
Bishop Shao said parents can do so through giving their children freedom to ask them questions.
“Let’s allow our children to ask parents questions and parents answer openly and loudly. This is the culture that should start from family level, so that the nation can have a culture of transparency and accountability,” Bishop Shao stated when speaking here at an international conference on transparency and accountability.
The Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) partnered with the Wajibu Institute in hosting the two-day conference, which ended yesterday in the city.
The event was aimed at giving participants a high-level overview of the global trends and practices in the use of public funds, project resources and in the provision of timely, high quality, cost-effective service delivery for citizens thereby holding those in public office accountable for their actions and misuse of power.
Bishop Shao attended the conference as member of national interfaith standing committee and among faith actors that benefited from the project called ‘Strengthening Civil Society’ implemented by the NCA.
The NCA and faith actors were engaged heavily on advocating for citizens’ rights to benefit from revenues accrued from extraction of natural resources through transparency and accountability.
Faith actors are empowered to mobilise rights holders and dialogue with duty bearers at all levels with focus on natural resource good governance.
The move also was intended to empower community anti-corruption groups to follow up and track on public resources for development, address corruption and reduction of mismanagement through public expenditure tracking systems (PETS) and social accountability monitoring (SAM).
On the other hand, Bishop Shao appealed to lawyers working with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to come forward and challenge in court government leaders suspected of squandering public funds without waiting steps to be taken by the government against them.
Commenting on citizens’ engagement in implementing monitoring and reporting in the use of public funds, Mr Chimuka Nachibinga, from Transparency International in Zambia, proposed for supportive funds monitoring legislation.
Mr Nachibinga also suggested that budget monitoring and expenditure tracking initiatives should be implemented as long-term programmes along with capacity building among citizens was also necessary.
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