Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has directed the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) to focus on curbing corruption in the education sector.
Inaugurating the International Anti-Corruption Day observance here on Friday, he said certain educational institutions demanded huge sums of money from job aspirants for appointments. Students were compelled to pay sizeable sums as admission fee.
“These are new and unwanted practices. This should be stopped,” he said. The Chief Minister announced that the agency had initiated a “Edu Vigil” scheme, which he hoped would achieve tangible results soon.
The VACB has formed district-level vigilance committees comprising young and enterprising law enforcers to detect and pro-actively prosecute corruption. The Vigilance should interfere in matters concerning the environment, public health, food safety and sale of banned and expired pharmaceutical drugs.
Henceforth, those entering government service would have to attend a seven-day training in good governance conducted by the VACB. Ordinary people arrive at government offices seeking redressal for issues that affected them deeply. Instead of solving those burning issues, some officials and politicians elected to public office raised unnecessary objections or deliberately created hurdles. These were the persons who set the stage for corruption, nepotism and maladministration, he said.
The VACB would conduct social audits to ensure that subsidies reached targeted sections of the populations.
Mr. Vijayan launched the applications — ArisingKerala and Whistle Now — that would enable citizens to report corruption. The advanced mobile applications were developed by the VACB as part of its series of innovative initiatives to fight graft.
He announced an award for whistle blowers who helped detect and prosecute big ticket corruption, above Rs.1 crore.
Additional Chief Secretary Nalini Netto said corruption and development had an “inverse relation.” One was always at the cost of the other.
VACB Director General Jacob Thomas welcomed the gathering.
