Parliament’s role in fighting corruption too weak: corruption observatory

PFT reports 56 corruption incidents in ministries in June

The Partners for Transparency NGO (PFT) said in its monthly report, monitoring corruption incidents in public institutions, issued Monday that the parliament concluded its second year without serious anti-corruption legislations which should enable and empower the role of bodies fighting corruption.

Among these bodies is the Administrative Prosecution, which the report declared to have been working “only upon political support from the presidency but amid a lack of legal tools to improve.”

PFT further assessed the role of the parliament in monitoring corruption “weak” in its second year, in comparison to the first year when it exposed an important wheat corruption case which resulted in the resignation of the former supply minister.

But according to the report, this lack of serious action doesn’t mean that MPs tried to tackle corruption issues through draft law proposals and requests of clarification to the prime minister and other ministers regarding specific incidents where they suspected corruption.

This comes as the report’s count for reported corruption incidents reached 56, with 14 at the Supply Ministry, followed by nine, seven, and five incidents for the ministries of health, local development, and education, respectively.The majority of incidents were reported in Cairo.