Civil society urges Government to refrain from distributing MCC’s funds to ‘clients’

The civil society asks the Government to fairly distribute the U.S. funds allocated for activities designed to reduce corruption and increase the quality of public services in Moldova as part of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Threshold Country Programme. At the official launch of the Threshold Programme, Valeriu Saharneanu, chairman of the Union of Journalists, said that since 2001 the communist government has not cooperated and does not want to hear of journalists that promote independent media. According to him, the civil society wants this programme to be efficient. The Union of Journalists is willing to engage and demands that the Government do not direct the resources to its “client” organisations. This programme proves the Governments’ will and readiness to reform and to improve the indexes regarding the prevention and reduction of corruption in Moldova in particular, First Deputy Prime Minister Zinaida Greceanai said. But she could not tell when Moldova will have a law on the responsibility of the government. Corruption is the major obstacle to Moldova’s development, which hinders the attraction of investment and diminishes the trust in public institutions, said the U.S. Ambassador to Moldova Michael D. Kirby. According to the U.S. diplomat, Moldova committed itself to implement reforms to prevent corruption and the U.S. to support it in this process. If Moldova implements the Threshold Programme successfully, it could be allotted millions of dollars afterwards. The U.S. will monitor the process each year and if the corruption index gets worse, the program will be halted. Moldova’s MCC Threshold Country Programme has a budget of 24.7 mln dollars. It will be implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during two years. The Government of Moldova pledged to carry out reforms in five key areas: strengthening of the judicial system’s capacities to prevent and combat corruption, consolidation of the capacities of monitoring the civil society and mass media, prevention and combating of corruption in the healthcare system, in the fiscal, customs and police agencies, and reformation of the Centre for Combating Corruption and Economic Crime.