Lack of co-operation among anti-corruption agencies: FM

Admitting "slackness" in implementing laws and lack of coordination between various probe agencies, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday asked private players and civil society to shoulder some responsibility in achieving "zero tolerance" on corruption.
"We are committed to making progress in our fight against corruption. It is also important that other stakeholders, including the private actors and the civil society, come forward in shouldering some responsibilities and contribute to the efforts of public agencies in this endeavor", he said.
"At the same time, we are one with the global community in sharing the responsibilities in our collective efforts to address this issue in its international dimension," Mukherjee said while addressing the concluding session of three-day conference of Seventh Regional Conference of the ADB-OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific Region.
He listed out various departments of the government which were engaged in controlling corruption but said, "this does not mean that we are free of corruption. Indeed, corruption is widespread and deep-rooted in our society".
"There are issues of slackness in implementation of existing laws, ineffectiveness of some laws, lack of coordination between different agencies that have overlapping mandates, policy gaps such as in the area of election funding and governance failure in several areas of public services delivery, that have contributed to the pervasiveness of this phenomenon."