PORT OF SPAIN, December 6th, 2012 – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute (TTTI) will mark this year’s International Anti-Corruption Day with an interactive event at Trincity Mall on Sunday 9 December 2012 from 2.30 to 6.00 p.m. to creatively highlight the role of individual citizens in the fight against corruption.
On the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day, and in support of the global Against Corruption Today (ACT) and Time to Wake Up campaigns, the UNDP and TTTI are seeking to raise awareness among members of the public about the importance of preventive action and behavioural change for maintaining the principles of integrity and accountability in public life.
Recognising that widespread public involvement and pressure are essential to root out corruption and promote a culture of integrity, engaging people in the fight against corruption is a key priority of the Transparency International Strategy 2015.
The Time to Wake Up campaign has therefore been created to mobilise and empower everyone to stigmatize corruption as a major social, economic and political wrong which infringes on basic human rights. The UNDP’s Against Corruption Today (ACT) campaign focuses on the ways that corruption can undermine achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
While corruption “seems to be a giant social scourge that the average citizen is powerless to change,” says Jens-Ulrich Poppen, Democratic Governance Specialist at the UNDP, he emphasizes that each person can make a significant difference by “speaking out, reporting corrupt officials and refusing to play along.
At Sunday’s event, popular television and radio personality Deborah Maillard, a.k.a. Philo, will engage Christmas shoppers and mall visitors in a series of skits using her popular stage persona and alter ego to share the anti-corruption message.
TTTI Director and co-organizer of the event, Susan Gordon, says that Philo’s down-to-earth character and plain speaking “will bring home the fact that you add to overall corruption every time you bypass the correct procedure and that ultimately corruption makes us all losers.”
The Transparency International Strategy 2015 can be downloaded from: http://issuu.com/transparencyinternational/docs/ti_strategy_2015?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222.
Please go to http://www.actagainstcorruption.org/ (Against Corruption Today) and http://www.timetowakeup.org/ (Time to Wake Up) for additional information on these campaigns.
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Trinidad & Tobago News