ASTANA – Public hearings on “Anti-corruption strategy: combining state and social efforts” were held Oct. 13 at the Civil Service Affairs and Anti-Corruption Agency.
The hearings are the result of more than 70 roundtables and other large-scale events sponsored across the country in the last few months to discuss the anti-corruption strategy implementation plan for 2018-2020.
Citizens had an opportunity to contribute ideas for combatting corruption by proposing an event to be included in the plan and more than 500 suggestions were submitted. Parliament deputies, in excess of 200 representatives of the non-governmental sector, business community, political parties, ambassadors and heads of international organisations’ missions in Kazakhstan attended the public hearings.
Elaborating on the content of the draft plan, agency anti-corruption policy department director Salauat Muksimov noted preparing the draft document incorporated both national and international experience accumulated during three years of implementing new anticorruption mechanisms.
He added the main efforts would be focused on automating and digitalising processes and procedures for rendering public services and completing monitoring activities, as well as increasing the transparency, openness and accountability of state bodies.
Muksimov spoke about the measures developed to reduce the corruption level in the quasi-public sector.
“The amount of money allocated for purchases in the quasi-public sector is over 3.5 trillion tenge (US$10.5 billion), which is four-five times higher than the volume of actual state purchases. The draft plan provides for legislative regulation of purchases by state-owned and national enterprises. It is also important to strengthen ethical standards of employer behaviour at national companies,” he said.
The draft plan introduces the amendments and additions to the anti-corruption legislation associated with improving the system of anti-corruption measures and strengthening the punishment for corrupt practices, which follow from the recommendations from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the national report on combating corruption.
