via CAAI News Media
Thursday, 18 February 2010 15:02 Vong Sokheng
THE country’s long-awaited Anticorruption Law is likely to be passed soon after the National Assembly reconvenes on April 1, Om Yentieng, senior minister and head of the Anticorruption Unit at the Council of Ministers, said Wednesday.
“NGOs and foreign experts [have been] deeply involved in the issue and now it is time for the government to put its hand into the process to combat corruption,” he told reporters after participating in the opening of an anticorruption training conference in Phnom Penh on Wednesday.
He said 62 members of the government’s Anticorruption Unit were taking part in the three-day training programme to learn how to design an anticorruption survey, and that three further training programmes, run by NGO Pact Cambodia with financial assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), were scheduled between April and June this year.
Flynn Fuller, mission director of USAID, said Wednesday that the US would contribute training and financial assistance, and that Christine Lohrmann, a Danish researcher and expert on corruption in Cambodia, would lead the seminars.
“We know that the Anticorruption Law has been passed by the Council of Ministers and will go to the National Assembly for approval. It is expected that law will meet international standards and will be formally activated this year,” Fuller said.
“But it is only the first step and there will be many more to follow.”
He said the introduction of an anticorruption law would be a major accomplishment for the Cambodian government and implementing the law will be challenging and require a lot of hard work.
Cheam Yeap, senior lawmaker from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, said that the National Assembly has not yet received the draft law on anticorruption from the Council of Ministers, but that he hoped the law would be passed by the end of June this year.
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