(SARAJEVO, 10 May 2017) The final conference of the project “Building of capacities for combat against corruption in the structures of the civil service in BiH” promoted the Handbook for employees in the civil service / administration for combat against corruption, and certificates were awarded for 31 trainers in this field. The project was financed by the funds of the Public Administration Reform Fund, and the implementer was “ZAMM media CONSULTING”. During the last 12 months, there were 25 individual trainings within the project from the field of combat against corruption for 550 civil servants from 148 different institutions. There was also a public campaign “Report a corruption” with a support of the public broadcasting services (BHRT, RTVFBiH, RTRS) in order to especially draw attention to the importance of reporting every corruptive act to the competent bodies.
“Efficient public administration is necessary for implementation of the reform policies, and public administration reform and combat against corruption are inseparable processes”, said the public administration reform coordinator doc. Dragan Ćuzulan, PhD, pointing out that one of the objectives was also a promotion of the ethical principles of the civil servants in order to combat together against this social appearance. “If we eradicate this plague in the institutions, we will bring back the public trust, which can be reached only by zero corruption tolerance”, concluded Ćuzulan and added that he was grateful to the implementers of the project for as job well done.
The very handbook explained the terms and forms of corruption with the methodology and the results of the research, the concepts and appearances of conflict of interest, the code of ethics and integrity, the transparency standards, draft of integrity plans and reporting on their implementation, and the strategic and operational framework for coordination, prevention and combat against corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “The Handbook, which is one of the main results of this project, did not exist so far as a standardised material for education of civil servants for combat against corruption and we hope that the institutions will find the way to apply this handbook in their daily work”, pointed out Almir Maljević, project team leader and one of the authors of the Handbook.
In addition to the Handbook, the important part of the project was also a communication campaign, as well as the trainings of the public relations officers. “We are certain that the project, will help both to them and to the others in recognising corruptive activities, while to us, as public relations officers, the important component of the project was insisting on proactive publication of information”, said assistant secretary general and manager of the Information Service of the Council of Ministers of BiH Mirjana Micevska.
As pointed out by the representative of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Srpska, Mladen Maksimović, it was a very useful and affirmative project for the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, and how seriously the institutions from the RS took this project is indicated by the information that of the total of 550 attendees of the training, 230 participants were from the RS. “I also gave a contribution in creating the Handbook and I believe that it would have a great application in practice”, said Maksimović.
You can download the Handbook here.