Partners Romania Wins Prize for Anti-Corruption Work
The program “A City without Corruption, a City with Future,” organized by Partners Romania together with the Romanian municipality of Craiova, recently won the first prize in the 2010 Civil Servants Agency Annual Competition in the category “Strengthening public service integrity, transparency and accountability.” The project aimed to improve accountability and combat corruption on the level of local government and was selected from over 30 different initiatives from across Romania, showing the impact of Partners’ work in the country.
With 500 employees, 27 elected councilors and a directly elected mayor, the city of Craiova was chosen in 2008 to participate in an international program led by the Open Society Institute and the World Bank Institute to combat corruption and transform the local government into an organization with integrity, transparency, efficiency and accountability. The approach called for the identification of sectors most vulnerable to corruption and for strategies to treat and prevent corrupt practices in these areas.
With financing from the European Union Transition Facility 2007, Partners Romania – Partners Foundation for Local Development (FPDL) – organized the anti-corruption program through a strategic participatory planning process and engaged local civil servants and managers. Early on, the issuance of building permits was cited as one of the activities most vulnerable to corruption.
The prize, which was awarded on November 16, 2010, was given by a committee comprising members from public administration universities, NGOs and media representatives. The approach of FPDL, which has worked to strengthen democratic governance and promote conflict management practices in Romania for over 14 years, was influenced by Ronald MacLean Abaroa, the first democratically elected mayor of La Paz, Bolivia, and a leading expert on governance and anti-corruption reform.
For more information on this program, please visit the following:
http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/stories/conquering-corruption-successfully-one-city-time
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