Attorney General Dale Marshall gave assurances that government has instituted a number of key pieces of legislation and measures to ensure accountability and transparency.
He made the comments today as he addressed the opening of the two-day Regional Training Workshop on Anti-Corruption: Misconduct in Public Office, at Radisson Aquatica Resort, hosted by the United States and United Kingdom governments.
Citing the recent passing of a new Anti-Corruption Act, the Attorney General announced that the integrity legislation will be laid before parliament again despite its defeat in the Senate in 2020.
“We’ve brought to the statute books, whistleblower protection; new public procurement legislation, which attempts to ensure that there’s transparency in all of our procurement processes; and we’ve also established by statute, a special agency to deal with anti-corruption issues. All of these things we’ve done because we want to underscore the importance of accountability for all public servants,” he stated.
The Attorney General pointed out that these new legislative approaches required persons to recognise they were in a different environment now, and that members of the public demanded accountability of public servants.
Barbados, he stated, had been bedevilled by the stigma of corruption in recent times, and has had to try to think of innovative ways of addressing the issue.
Mr. Marshall pointed out that to date, no one had been charged under the modern legislation, as he explained that investigating corruption in a modern environment was difficult.