48 government agencies top anti-graft champ list

MANILA, Philippines - Forty-eight government agencies made it to the list of the top anti-graft champions of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC) for yearend 2009.

PAGC chief Secretary Constancia de Guzman announced the awardees at this year’s first follow-up meeting on the Integrity Development Action Plan (IDAP), the national anti-corruption framework, and the Moral Renewal Action Program (MRAP), the culminating phase of IDAP.

The IDAP-MRAP meeting, held recently at the Diosdado Macapagal Hall of the Land Bank of the Philippines head office, saw more than 300 government officials “committing to strengthen their efforts at making their respective agencies corruption-free,” De Guzman said.

The delegates also hailed the 48 awardees from among the 186 IDAP implementing government agencies.

IDAP consists of 22 specific and doable anti-graft measures under four major areas of implementation: corruption prevention (systems control), education (values formation), deterrence (investigation and enforcement), and strategic partnership (multisectoral involvement).

“The level of compliance with these measures as embodied in the IDAP and the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan 2004-2010 served as the basis of the awards,” De Guzman said.

She said the recognition was based not on perception surveys, but on IDAP indicators of compliance with the various doables using a five-point rating scale. Thus, no agency made it to second place since none garnered the required total rating.

The awards were clustered into two categories: one for national government agencies (NGAs) with 43 awardees, and the other for government-owned and controlled corporations and government financial institutions with five.

Sharing the top spot in the NGA category are the departments of social welfare and development, and health.