Assets office to name, shame non-compliant officers

The Office of the Director of Public Officers’ Declarations (Odpod) will publicise details of all listed public officers (LPOs) that did not declare their assets in the 2021/22 financial year.

In an interview last Friday, Odpod public relations officer Tiyamike Phiri said for the first-time since 2013 they will make public details of defaulters, including a compliance status analysis, through an annual assessment report which the Minister of Justice Titus Mvalo will table before Parliament during the next meeting that starts on February 18 2023.

Odpod’s move comes after its preliminary assessment recorded 22 percent of LPOs that have not declared their assets during the said financial year, representing a 78 percent compliance rate.

Section 18 (1) of the Public Officers (Declaration of Assets, Liabilities and Business Interests) Act states that a listed public officer commits an offence if he or she fails to declare assets without reasonable cause within the time determined by the Act, and is, therefore, liable to dismissal from public office.

However, no public officer has been dismissed since the Act came into force despite thousands of them failing to comply year in, year out.

During the fiscal year 2021/22, Odpod was expecting to receive declarations from 205 public institutions spread across the country that have not less than 11 000 officers required by law to declare their assets.

The office was created to promote public confidence, ensure integrity and curb corruption in the public

 service by receiving, verifying and publicising declarations of the LPOs.

Phiri said the annual assessment report is an appraisal of the way the LPOs have fared in their compliance with the Act, including their submission status on which the report mainly dwells on.

“After this report and from the same contents or compliance statistics that have informed the assessment, pursuant to Section 11 (2)(g) of the Act, Odpod will subsequently publish, in the Gazette, the names of compliant and non-compliant LPOs.

“It is our considered expectation that the general public, civil society and the media will take interest in both the annual assessment report and the gazette on the compliant and noncompliant LPOs,” she said.

Phiri also said they had finalised verifying compliance of all the MDAs, but details were yet to be submitted to relevant authorities, including the Parliamentary Monitoring Committee (PMC) and the Minister of Justice.

As per statutory requirements, Odpod director, who is accountable to Parliament through the PMC, has since furnished the committee with the compliance status of all the MDAs.

In an interview on Monday, PMC chairperson Joyce Chitsulo confirmed receiving the compliance status and summoning some selected MDAs.

“We already summoned Escom chief executive officer, who confirmed the default rate. So, we are writing Odpod to act. As for the police, we will be summoning the Inspector General to respond and once proved that 49 percent of her

  officers defaulted, Odpod will also act on them according to the law and that means recommending for their dismissal,” she explained.

Transparency and accountability commentator Willy Kambwandira said while it was encouraging that public officers were slowly embracing the constitutional requirement there was need to move beyond mere declaration of assets by LPOs.

“The law demands that a listed public officer who fails to declare assets three months after assuming roles of a public office without sufficient grounds must be removed from a public office, and the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] must begin criminal proceedings against such officers. We have not seen this, and what we see is perhaps selective implementation of the asset declaration law,” observed Kambwandira, who is executive director of Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency.