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PM Dacian Ciolos launches national anti-corruption fight
Romania's prime minister is launching a national anti-corruption strategy in a bid to crack down on widespread corruption that plagues every walk of life in Romania, AP correspondent reports.
Premier Dacian Ciolos said Tuesday he was "thinking about 'the gift' we slip under the counter ... the money we put in the medic's pocket," laying out the strategy that he said required "integrity, transparency, education."
In the opening of the public debate on the new National Anticorruption Strategy, Ciolos said it would take years to root out corruption in Romania. He urged managers to be more transparent, and ordinary people to take a stand, saying passivity and indifference harms the anti-corruption fight.
Romania has cracked down on high-level corruption in recent years. However graft remains widespread, in the health care system, education and local administration.
Medics and teachers argue corruption would end if salaries were raised.
According to Ciolos, corruption, corroborated with indifference, can literally kill:
"Corruption kills! Your remember this slogan just a few months ago and here we are today, as we see that in many situations — corruption corroborated with indifference — and it is important to underscore this thing — can literally kill, we have seen cases in the healthcare sector, and it can socially kill by alienation, when these ingredients — corruption and indifference — are met in education (...). To give only two examples of two areas where there is a distinct feeling in the society that we need reform, but we are under the impression that this reform must only come from the state or the Government," Prime Minister Ciolos told the debate organised at the Victoria Governmental Palace.
He pointed out that both in the healthcare area and in the education sector political measures must be taken, but a shift in attitude is also needed.
"I can assure you that in both areas — healthcare and education — firm political or governmental measures must be taken, but in both areas, without a shift in our attitude, as beneficiaries of the public services in healthcare and education, we shall not manage to eliminate corruption and so much less indifference," Ciolos said.
În his opinion, the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) has to increase its efficiency in recovering assets impounded under court rulings.
"I am using this opportunity to congratulate the Justice Ministry on having made operational an agency for the administration of impounded assets. There are still more steps to be taken, but what I promised early in my tenure is starting to materialise. And I am also using the occasion of Mrs Finance Minister's presence here to say that in order to improve justice credibility, the impounded assets for which the agency, ANABI, is responsible have to be recovered, but it is equally important that the department of ANAF with similar responsibilities should also increase its efficiency in recovering the impounded assets ordered under court rulings,"Ciolos told the opening of a public debate on Romania's new anti-corruption strategy organised in Bucharest by the Justice Ministry and the Chancellery of the Prime Minister.