Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria in collaboration with the Calabar Centre for Justice and Peace Initiative today, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, began a two-day training workshop on whistle blowing for public officials in the Due Process office in Calabar as well as for one procurement officer each, drawn from the 18 local government areas of Cross River State.
Cletus Aloke, the Programme Manager in his opening remarks, thanked the participants for coming and stated that the training is not only for the participants to hear from the organizers of the training but also an avenue to get feed-back from the participants on the gaps in the procurement Laws and the procurement processes. When Aloke spoke with www.calitown.com, he opined that the emphasis on training procurement officers on whistle blowing will help them raise concerns about wrongdoing in their work places so that the violation of government financial regulations as well as procurement procedures, mismanagement or misappropriation of public funds and assets, financial malpractice, fraud and theft of public assets, will cease.
Project Officer, Calabar Centre for Justice and Peace Initiative, William Itorok, speaking at the workshop’s opening, came clear that it has become imperative to employ multi-faceted strategies in the fight against corruption. The whistle blowing training as one critical aspect in the fight against corruption, he stressed, targeted procurement officers in the state because these category of persons often have insider information and know when government is about to be short-changed in the award of contracts and projects execution.
The training is conducted under the supervision of the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP and is fully funded by the European Union.
