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We have heard that power corrupts. Indeed it does.
We have in the past few weeks carried a story about apparent abuse of power in the police force in Bulawayo whereby a senior police officer allegedly had sexual relations with up to 11 female officers, if lists doing the rounds are anything to go by.
We will not crucify him as the only man under the sun guilty of such but we use him here to illustrate a point. Honesty and integrity are a prerequisite in whichever role that one plays. We do not have a law that limits the number of women that someone may have relations with but it is morally wrong for a man to use his position to prey on hapless subordinates. We are shocked that women’s organisations have not condemned this clear abuse. This is a corrupt practice whereby people are allegedly recommended for deployment, for courses and even promotion on emotion rather than merit.
Also this should never be viewed as an isolated institutional blemish peculiar to the force because it is not. Different institutions should look through their systems and review them where need be so that those that are supposed to facilitate do not suffocate the very processes they preside over. Let us not have individuals run programmes that give them too much power without oversight of a structure in the form of a committee to moderate or review their decisions. This breeds corruption. The country is importing food worth millions of dollars due to the drought and without proper legal, logistical and other systems, much of the investment might be lost to corruption. Blow the whistle on corruption right where you are. That is your moral duty.
Can you imagine the impact on the fiscus if all Government departments were run according to romantic liaisons? In fact, the country could be losing a lot of money paying thousands of workers whose sole pre-occupation would be to entertain their bosses, whether male or female. What this does is that in real terms it shrinks our competent labour force through creating a web of ghost workers whose loyalty is to certain individuals. This also happens in private companies and affects their performance and cumulatively these corrupt and immoral practices become a financial strain on the institutions. It is easy to make statements denouncing corruption but it should start right where you are through tangible action of choosing to do the right thing. Let us stop the abuse, choose professional competence over sexual proficiency, productivity over reproductive capacity, integrity over venal lucre.
Online Reporter