Head of Public Service Koskei holds talks with 13 envoys

Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service, Felix Koskei on Wednesday met 13 heads of foreign missions to Nairobi to discuss areas of mutual cooperation in the government’s fight against corruption.

Koskei thanked the ambassadors for their continued financial and technical support in strengthening government institutions that are critical in the fight against graft.

The Institutions include the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

“Friends have come in a big way to strengthen institutions such as EACC, but still there’s a problem,” Koskei told the meeting, which took place at a Nairobi hotel. 

“It is because the people at the space where corruption thrives--civil servants--have not been focused.”

Koskei and the ambassadors agreed on the need to identify key government institutions which are most susceptible to high graft and concentrate efforts on eliminating the vice and thus set them up as an example to the rest.

“The political goodwill that was not there is now there,” said Koskei.

“What we need with EACC is to strengthen its prevention departments,” he said, noting that prosecution of graft cases is usually a lengthy and complex process.

Koskei called on foreign missions to support efforts to carry out empirical studies on the true scale of corruption in the country, which he said is currently a matter of public conjecture.

He said the government is determined to place all its services on the E-Citizen platform within a month as a way of minimizing human contact, which is often the genesis of corruption deals within government institutions. 

Present were ambassadors Stephen Jackson (UN Resident Coordinator), Marc  Dillard, (Deputy Chief of Mission, US), Neil Wigan (UK), Christoper Thornley (Canada), Alexander Fierley (Deputy Ambassador, Germany), Trine Gronborg (Deputy Ambassador, Denmark ), and Pirrka Tapiola (Finland).

Others were Arnaud Suquet (France), Maarten Brouwer (Netherlands),  Gunner Andreas Holm (Norway), Helge Flard (Deputy Head of Mission, Sweden), Valentin Zellweger (Switzerland), Ondrej Simek (Deputy Ambassador, EU), and Caitriona Ingoldsby (Ireland).