The Ethics Secretariat has revealed that the number of citizens' complaints against public leaders especially those concerning violation of the Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act continued to decrease.
It noted that the trend indicates the strengthening of ethics development and good governance in the country.
According to the Secretariat's report, between July 2019 and April this year, the number of complaints has decreased from 234 to 226. Speaking on Friday at a working session between the President's Office- Ethics Secretariat and editors from various media outlets held in Dar es Salaam, Ethics Secretariat Commissioner Judge (rtd) Sivangilwa Mwangesi said that despite the decrease in complaints, there is still work to be done to promote ethics.
He said the media has great role to play by continuing to conduct and reporting in-depth investigative stories about unethical conducts of public leaders.
"Despite the decrease in complaints, there is still work to be done in to ensure ethical standards of public leaders are strictly scrunitised in order to enhance public trust and strengthening the development of the nation," he said.
"Public leaders' ethics is an important pillar to ensure leaders perform their duties with integrity, accountability and transparency." He said decrease in complaints can be interpreted to the increase of awareness to both citizens and public leaders in carrying out their responsibilities in accordance with the Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act.
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Secretariat focuses on strengthen the participation of citizens in ensuring they becomes a part of responsibility in promoting public leaders' ethics.
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In a related development, he said the efforts made by President Samia Suluhu Hassan to ensure leaders adhere to ethical conducts have contributed to significant increase in accountability among public leaders, as evidenced by the timely return of the public leaders' declaration form.
He said that up to June 2023, a total of 13,485 declarations equal to 87 per cent of the 15,556 declarations received have been analyzed compared to 7,732 declarations in 2019/20 equal to an increase of more than 100 per cent.
Regarding public awareness of the ethics matters, the commissioner urged editors in the country to use their tools to publish the stories on significance of ethics for public leaders to promote their integrity.
He added that the media can help remind leaders to comply with the requirements of the 1977 country's constitution and Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act number 13 of 1995.
