The Kenya National Chambers of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday raised concern over a weak legal system frustrating the fight against corruption.
KNCCI chairman Fred Ngatia said despite progressive paperwork to help fight corruption, occupants of offices that need to actualise the fight have remained lame and this hurt the business environment.
Ngatia spoke during the first Africa Business Ethics Conference (Abec).
He said lack of prosecution has led to Kenyans losing faith in the institutions among them the Judiciary.
"We have courts, but Kenyans continue to perceive courts as being ineffective. Despite having independent offices, very few corruption cases are well investigated and prosecuted in our courts of law. Reliance is placed more on hearsay than hard facts," Ngatia said.
However, Chief Justice David Maraga has come out to defend the arm of government citing weak cases presented before them.
Ngatia further said the fight against corruption has been turned into a battlefield that individuals use to settle personal scores.
"The problem is not absence of institutions, rather, the people," he said.
Ngatia proposes multi-agency cooperation if the vice is to be successfully fought.
"Despite Kenya having a sound legal and institutional framework that should instil ethics and integrity in businessmen, we continue to witness bribery and corruption cases which are manifestations of low integrity and ethical conduct," Ngatia said.
He notes a third of Kenya’s budget gets lost to corruption.
"Transparency International ranks Kenya 144th out of 180 countries in the world with a corruption score of 27 per cent that indicates that the country is highly corrupt. According to the World Bank, the transparency and accountability of Kenya as a country are poor as indicated by the banks’ low index of 3.0," Ngatia said.
Edited by R.Wamochie
