An assessment of the Leadership Code Act 2002 as a mechanism of controlling corruption in the public sector: A case study of Tororo District.

Abstract

The objective of the study was to establish if the Leadership Code Act 2002 is an effective mechanism of controlling corruption at the local government level. The study extensively exploreda number the pre-conditions that are presumed safeguards for its operation – interrogating the level of public awareness and participation in the feeding into the system by way of providing credible information to inspectorate of government, the level of compliance to the disclosure requirements by the prescribed officers, the level and frequency of the inspectorate team in verifying and authenticating the submitted information, and rate or level of prosecution as well as conviction secured that are directly attributable to the breach of the Act. The study worked under the hypothesis that compliance with the Leadership Code Act by public officers, followed by a thorough and authentication of the declarations, supported by the involvement of the public to provide complementary information with which to check and detect their accuracy or authenticity will be vital in checking the incidence of abuse of public office and consequently would reduce levels corruption in the public domain. And a deficiency of that would render the Act ineffective in achieving the same. Now coming back to the findings of the study, we realized that; there was low level of compliance with the LCA by the specified public officers; low level of public awareness as well as their non-involvement in the implementation as stakeholders who would provide complementary information to the Inspectorate, there had been no verifications of the declarations to establish their authenticity or accuracy, and there had been no prosecutions or convictions directly related to the breach of the Act. The following conclusions are derived from the study; o Most citizens don’t report corruption cases formally mostly due to apathy and lack of awareness about the enforcement machinery, the Inspectorate of Government o The general citizenry has limited knowledge on the national policies and campaigns aimed at fighting corruption. The Inspectorate of Government staff have done so little to increase the awareness and enhance public involvement o Whereas the respondents across the district complained of corruption, they rarely report such cases officially to the IGG. The number of people reporting incidences of corruption is very low o The politicians influence the disbursement and utilization of funds in the district and particularly nepotism was cited as influencing allocation of positions and resources.

Therefore, it was established that the policy is not an effective deterrent on controlling corruption in the public domain and this serves to verify the position of the hypothesis, that the policy of the Leadership Code Act is not an effective mechanism of controlling public sector corruption.