Reactivation of People’s Graftwatch in Bacolod Pushed

The General Alliance of Workers Association (GAWA) led by its Secretary-General Wennie Sancho is calling on anti-corruption advocates and like-minded individuals to campaign for the reactivation of the People’s Graftwatch in Bacolod City.

In a statement, Sancho said the People’s Graftwatch then was headed by the late Dr. Patricio Tan who achieved notable gains in combating graft and corruption in the government until the year 1990. “Graftwatch served as a frontdesk in receiving and facilitating request for assistance, complaint, or reports of any anomalous or corrupt practices by referring these complaints to the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas,” he said.

“Graftwatch served as a Corruption Prevention Unit (CPU) that would broaden community participation by serving as the eyes and arms of the Ombudsman in closely monitoring critical and substantially funded projects or transactions in their respective areas of concern,” he also said.

Corruption is a significant obstacle to good governance. Corruption exist at a considerable scale and scope ranging from petty bribery to grand corruption. The Philippines have a long history of corruption, from embezzlement of public funds, graft and abuse of power by elected officials are very common. It is widely held that the problem of corruption is the singularly biggest systematic problem of our society. Corruption is part of the system, if not the system itself, he added.

“But what is serious and grievous is our attitude and values towards corruption. We live in a valueless society where only wealth and power matters, without realizing that corruption is a dagger pointed at the heart of democracy. It is a reflection of our collective weakness, the lethargy of a society that wavers between passive indignation and mere indifference, hardly in the position to complain loudly about the decay of corruption that is undermining our system,” Sancho also said in a statement.

“Generally, it signifies moral deterioration and decay in the sphere of government administration. It denotes perversion of integrity in the discharge of public duties. A white-collar crime committed to serve private ends. There is an urgent need to reactivate Graftwatch and other Corruption Prevention Units (CPU”s) before we will be swallowed by the specter of corruption and before all the values of society shall finally be crashed and everything is for sale subjecting all of us to the indignities of life, particularly the poor and the oppressed,” Sancho said.*