National Plan for the Fight against Corruption performed by a third

The National Plan of anti-corruption measures for 2012-2015 was performed by a third in the first year, according to the results of monitoring carried out by the Constitution Foundation with financial support from USAID.

According to the head of the Constitution Foundation Alimammad Nuriyev, the monitoring covered the period from September 2012 to September 2013. According to him, the measures provided for this period were performed at 34%. One of the problems faced by the project executors was not providing responds to the Foundation’s requests by government agencies.

However, some state agencies after completion of the study took positive steps in the area of transparency. Thus, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, which is under new management, recently posted on its website information about all the recipients of targeted social assistance.

Nuriyev also expressed the view that the monitoring has shown the best performance measures where one government agency, and not a few, is responsible for that.

The head of the organization Transparency - Azerbaijan Rena Safaraliyeva said that the study was carried out on the methodology of Transparency International.

Expert of the Constitution Foundation Zaur Ibrahimli noted that the monitoring was based upon information from public sources - sites of government agencies and their answers to questions, media materials and responses to queries of NGO partners.

During the discussions, it was suggested that the lag in the implementation of the planned measures may generally have a negative impact on the performance of the Action Plan.

In addition, the project recommended national donors to increase allocations to NGOs for public control over measures to combat corruption.

The National Action Plan for the Fight against Corruption for 2012-2015 consists of 28 articles. An important place is given in terms of improving the legal framework.

In addition, it is expected that additional measures will improve the protection of witnesses and collaborators with the police in the fight against corruption. It is planned to develop a proposal to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to deal with the investigation of corruption crimes.

The plan prescribes the preparation of proposals on limiting the judges' immunity in the fight against corruption.

A series of measures concerns the public service. In particular, a set of measures is to increase transparency admission to the civil service as a whole and its functioning. The duties of the officers will be imputed regular reception of citizens complaining about the facts of corruption.

Many public services under the plan will be translated into electronic form. Thus, the extract from the state register of real estate will be issued in electronic form. Digitization and issuing licenses for different types of business activities is planned.

The plan provides for cooperation of government agencies and civil society institutions. However, many of the proposed measures have not been implemented yet. -06D -