Nairobi — Head of Public Service Felix Koskei has urged foreign missions to support efforts to carry out empirical studies on true scale of corruption in the country.
Speaking during a meeting with 13 heads of foreign missions, Koskei stated that corruption is a matter of public conjecture and should be effectively dealt with.
He pointed out that the government is determined to place all its services on the E-Citizen platform within a month as a way of minimizing human contact, "which is often the genesis of corruption deals within government institutions."
Koskei thanked the ambassadors for their continued financial and technical support in strengthening government institutions that are critical in the fight against graft, such as the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
"Friends have come in a big way to strengthen institutions such as EACC, but still there's a problem," Koskei told the meeting, which took place at a Nairobi hotel. "It is because the people at the space where corruption thrives-civil servants-have not been foccused."
Koskei and the ambassadors agreed on the need to identify key government institutions which are most susceptible to high graft and concentrate efforts to eliminating the vice, and thus set them up as an example to the rest.
"The political goodwill that was not there is now there," said Mr. Koskei. "What we need with EACC is to strengthen it's prevention departments," he said, noting that prosecution of graft cases is usually a lenghty and complex process.
Present were ambassadors Stephen Jackson (UN Resident Coordinator), Marc Dillard, (Deputy Chief of Mission, US), Neil Wigan (UK), Christoper Thornley (Canada), Alexander Fierley (Deputy Ambassador, Germany), Trine Gronborg (Deputy Ambassador, Denmark ), and Pirrka Tapiola (Finland).
Others were Arnaud Suquet (France), Maarten Brouwer (Netherlands), Gunner Andreas Holm (Norway), Helge Flard (Deputy Head of Mission, Sweden), Valentin Zellweger (Switzerland), Ondrej Simek (Deputy Ambassador, EU), and Caitriona Ingoldsby (Ireland).
