Saturday January 7, 2017
Kabul (BNA) As part of its recent move on fighting corruption and bringing reforms among the government entities, the government of Afghanistan has suspended Razaq Tawhidi, the minister of communications information technology.
Last week, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan suspended the minister of communications over a levy on mobile telephone charges. The ministry’s spokesperson said the decision to suspend minister Wahidi was taken after an audit into the collection of a 10 percent tax on mobile phone top-ups imposed in 2015. He also said the president’s office, which has declared the fight against graft as a top priority, felt the ministry had not cooperated sufficiently with an investigation into alleged corruption surrounding the levy. It is worth mentioning that the communications minister was among eight other ministers impeached on November 15, due to their failure to spend 70 percent of their relevant development budget, but he could win the vote of confidence by the National Assembly. Unfortunately, in fact, corruption is a widespread and growing problem in Afghan society. Afghanistan is routinely named as one of the world’s five most corrupts nations. Today in Afghanistan, corruption most often takes the form of demanding and offering bribes, both in the private and public sectors and on large and small scales. Based on a report recently released by Afghanistan’s evaluation and investigation unit, the people bribe amount has been estimated to be over $3bln each year. That is why in any international conferences, the government has had a clear answer on fighting corruption. Actually, the government of national unity has done much to attract the people trust and increase the number of its world supporters, and as part of its first step in fight against corruption, it resumed investigation on Kabul Bank scandal. After that the government has established the ‘Judicial Center on Fighting Corruption’—an entity that has not done anything special so far. This is while that the government of national unity has started serious fight against corruption. But it is unclear such moves will continue or not, a question that should be waited for its answer.
Lailuma Noori
