Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, reminded in connection with the World Anti Corruption Day, 9 December, that Serbia needs to faster achieve much better results in the fight against corruption. This calls for more vigorous taking of all available measures among which public control of operations of the Government and public authorities must not be avoided.

In connection with this, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

“Declared commitments for the fight against corruption must be confirmed, primarily by willingness of responsible officers to subject their work to control by competent authorities and particularly by the public. It is irresponsible to turn a blind eye to the fact that there are more than serious problems in this regard and that the lack of willingness of many in the Government to subject their work to any kind of control is evident.

For years barely, 2,000 of about 12,000 entities have been submitting reports to the Republic Public Procurement Agency; three quarters of officers who have a duty to report their financial status have not been executing it; in exercise of freedom of information, by far the most problems have been encountered in connection with information on disposal of public money and resources; the number of unexecuted Commissioner’s rulings have been increasing and the Government have not been taking measures for enforcement of those rulings, although that is it’s duty; budget regulations which ignore rights of the public have been adopted; the budget has not been audited at all etc.

In such situation, it is logical that even the audit of some 25% of only one of eight unaudited budgets causes disturbance. What is worrying is that there have been complaints even about SAI for making its report available to the public. It is worrying and beggars belief because raising of the level of transparency is exactly what we need. We obviously have more than enough reasons to apply it as a highly effective remedy in the fight against corruption. It is relatively easy and quick to apply, it does not cost a lot and experiences of other countries show that it gives the results we really need.”