Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeria, told the National Assembly today that Guyana has been making ‘good progress’ in its fight against corruption, boasting that all the country’s anti-corruption agencies are doing their jobs.

Responding to questions from WIN Member of Parliament, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, Ms. Teixeira said Guyana has ratified a number of anti-corruption programmes that have helped the country see results.

“Mr. Speaker, I would believe that we have been making good progress as we say in Guyana ‘one, one dutty build dam’. We have had to do one at a time to build out the capacity of the human resources of each agency, to develop collaboration between agencies to be able to bring stronger investigations and prosecutions and our position on asset forfeiture has been recognized by the UN convention against corruption, our best practices with regards to the Auditor General’s office, and the Public Service Commission are recognized by the Inter-American commission against corruption,” the Minister noted.

Questioned about the Government’s anti-corruption workshop, Teixeira said there is no data to show whether that workshop has had an impact on the fight against corruption, but she said there are strong collaborations coming out of those workshops.

“Mr. Speaker, we have been reporting and our progress is noted in terms of the improvements in collaboration, improvements of the standards and protocols in the issues on how we bring prosecutions to the court, these are all mechanisms. When you look at the Auditor General’s report, the reduction of the number of issues that have been raised in them regarding follow up and implementation of the recommendations of the Auditor General,” Teixeira noted.

She noted that there are anti-corruption agencies that have developed capacity that was not in existence previously.

Additionally, she noted that there will be an amended version of the Integrity Commission Act to strengthen enforcement.

She also does not rule out the setting up of an independent anti-corruption agency.

“Mr. Speaker, when the time comes and when we want to create an anti-corruption unit, we will use the best practices that we know in other countries and we will use our own experience to develop that. But right now, the model of SARA and the experience of SARA because the head of SARA had more powers that the Commissioner of Police and the DPP and constitutionally appointed people,” Teixeira said. 

She noted that the fight against corruption will take time as there has be a drastic culture shift.

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