DOHA: With billions of dollars at stake in infrastructure development projects many of which are being handled by the Public Works Authority (Ashghal), its senior officials have recently attended a training programme to identify corruption and prevent and fight the menace.
The training course was designed and provided by an anti-corruption centre that has been set up here recently and which aims at identifying target groups in the government to provide training to prevent corruption.
The Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Centre is designing a number of anti-corruption training courses for target groups and has plans to invite international experts with proven track record of fighting corruption in public places to conduct the training programmes. The focus of the training course for senior Ashghal officials was on preventing all forms of possible corruption in infrastructure development projects.
The Centre’s future training programmes will focus on tackling corruption and particularly identifying and fighting irregularities in handling public money and detecting possible irregularities in supply contracts and main contracts of development projects, and the process of taking legal steps. The CEO of the Centre, Fahad bin Sadoon Al Athba, lauded the role of Ashghal and its employees in national development and said they were contributing greatly to helping achieve the Qatar National Vision 2030.
“Our Centre is keen to develop anti-corruption training programmes for targeted segments, whose focus will be on providing practical training and not just theoretical lessons,” he said.
“Our job is to identify international specialists who have proven expertise in identifying and fighting corruption and they will be invited here to manage the training courses.”
One of the main focuses of the above programmes will be to tell the trainees about the different forms of corruption and only then can it be fought, the CEO said.
The target segments that are to be trained to prevent and combat corruption will consist of senior government officials who also need to be identified.
The Centre will be closely coordinating with the government in its efforts to spread awareness about the importance of the rule of law and educate the right people about it, said Al Athba.
The aim of the Centre is to make sure that Qatar has a corruption-free environment.
The training programmes assume significance as a number of cases of alleged corruption have been coming to light in the country as tens of billions of dollars have been spent on infrastructure projects. The Peninsula
