– Your Venerable Monks,
– Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
– Teachers, Students and My Dear Compatriots!
Today, I am greatly delighted to preside over the inauguration ceremony of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection’s Office Building, here at Tonle Basac district, Khan Chamkarmon, Phnom Penh, which is being held with the participation from Your Venerable Buddhist Monks, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Teachers, Students and my dear compatriots whose participation make this occasion the most glorious and auspicious one. Your participation clearly reflects a sense of solidarity, unity and high determination in congratulating the new achievement made by the Royal Government.
In this joyful gathering, on behalf of the Royal Government and myself, I would like to express my brotherhood sentiment toward Your Venerable Monks, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Teachers, Students and my Dear Compatriots and to sincerely praise the leaders of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection that have worked hard with high responsibility to greatly fulfill their duties in enhancing the ministry’s works in accordance with the Royal Government’s political platform.
The Royal Government in the third term of the National Assembly has laid out the Rectangular Strategy which clearly stated the importance of “Promoting Economic Growth” “Generating Employment for Workers” “Promoting Social Equity” as well as “Strengthening the Public Sector’s Capacity”. Indeed, this strategy has played an important role as a tool in supporting the implementation of the Royal Government’s political platform toward vastly achieving the poverty reduction, promoting development, progress, prosperity, harmony and happiness for every Cambodian citizen all over the country. At the same time, the Royal Government has also adopted the notion of Good Governance as the core of the Rectangular Strategy which is based on 4 elements including: “Combating Corruption” “Law and Judicial System Reform” “Public Administration Reform” and “Armed Force Reform”.
Without any doubt, the crucial policies above require all ministries, institutions, municipal and provincial authorities, government officials at all levels, and all citizens to jointly promote and implement the Royal Government’s political platform with high responsibility.
However, along with the joint efforts to actively implement the policies above, there must be a comprehensive review which enables us to realize whether what have been done was appropriate or not. Therefore, inspection is the necessary factor used to strengthen good governance, to promote the respect for and implementation of the law, especially, it aims firstly at combating corruption because it could affect the business environment and the daily social interactions. Corruption is a major barrier for national development. Corruption derives from opportunity, attitude, and various types of risk that resulted in a lost in the public confidence on the leadership of the Royal Government. In this sense, combating against corruption must focus on three essential factors including the prevention, enhancing the implementation of the law and people participation. By looking at the first two factors we can see that the inspection’s works or enhancing the implementation of the law can not be separated from the education about the law because in order to fight as well as preventing corruption there must be participation from the people, and the participation itself requires the prior understanding of the law which in turns requires education and information regarding the law.
In this regard, the Royal Government has decided to establish the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection as a mechanism to expand and strengthen the understanding of the law for every citizen as well as monitoring and controlling the implementation of the law and the Royal Government’s political platform, ensuring good governance, promoting the respect for and implementation of the law aiming at improving the capacity to fight against corruption, to eradicate bureaucracy and to reduce poverty.
In this auspicious event, which I have the honor to preside over in the inauguration ceremony of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection’s Office Building, I would like to raise some common views regarding the works of the parliamentary affairs and inspection as follows:
First- Works Related to the Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection: this sector has greatly and actively contributed in the Royal Government’s political platform by coordinating and facilitating the works between the local level and the Royal Government and between the Royal Government and the two legislative institutions through the preparation, facilitation and enhancement of drafting the law and other legal document in accordance with the Kingdom of Cambodia’s constitution so that it can be used with efficiency, perfection and without any flaw. For instance, the Royal Government has assigned the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection with the role to review and amend the draft law on Anti-Corruption in order to add more legal framework. The ministry has recently sent the amended draft laws to the Council of Ministers.
Moreover, the ministry has actively disseminated the information regarding the law and legal documents to the people all over the country to enhance the implementation and the respect of law, to reduce corruption and offences, to promote morality and social justice to create a peaceful and non-violence culture, and to strengthen the state law and democracy.
Second- Inspection’s Works: As I have mentioned earlier, if we want every activity regarding the proper implementation of the ministry, institution and agency’s works, we must have a comprehensive and thorough review. The word Inspection means: reviewing, monitoring, and investigating on the action and progress of the works being implemented in order to assess and identify the advantages and disadvantages. In this sense, inspection means the contribution to prevent, reduce and eventually eradicate corruption which is proved to be a destructive factor in the implementation of the Royal Government’s development policy.
Within this framework, inspection is an important work because regardless the types of institution, once they have prepared and adopted certain strategies or policies they must implement them. Along with the implementation, there must be regular review and inspections. Hence, inspection is a mechanism connecting leaders with the people, in the other word, “Inspection Are the Eyes and Ears of High Level Officials While They Are Closed Friends to the Low Level Official”. Inspection is a necessary and sufficient work in which the Royal Government requires all institutions from the middle to the local levels to conduct good inspections, to prepare and set up inspections in order to be their eyes and ears so that they can see further and hear clearer and make better decisions, to set as role model for the broad development at any institution, which has properly implemented, understood the source of difficulties and mistakes, and helped to improve and direct other institutions that have made mistakes and performed poorly.
In this regard, in order to conduct a good inspection leaders must not only read the reports made by inspectors, but must perform a thorough review whether or not what have been reported were actually implemented. Any complaint or accusation from the people must be carefully and timely investigated from the start to the end and should not have any delay for months or years. All inspectors must be fully capable and possess high education, good moral and appropriate skills.
The inspection requires active participation from Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen who are the heads of institutions, local authorities and departments from all fields and levels for an effective and smooth implementation of the inspection. At the same time, inspection requires the participation from all citizens, because sometimes people know better and can be our eyes and ears. In summary, in order to have a fruitful inspection with transparency and high efficiency, leaders must create favorable environment for inspectors to effectively carry out their works and inspectors themselves must be capable and have good cooperation with the ministry, institution, department, local authority as well as with every ordinary people.
With the magnitude of the work, difficulty, responsibility as well as the huge demand from the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection, the Royal Government decided to offer the ministry with this brand-new office building which is sufficiently equipped to respond to every important mission of the ministry as mentioned earlier. The Royal Government hopes that this new achievement will certainly help to reduce the difficulty and encourages the leaders as well as officials of the ministry to put more efforts into fulfilling their duties that have been assigned by the Royal Government.
I would like to also take this opportunity to thank the NEW HOPE Co. Ltd., with Okngha Lay Bunpa as the Director, which has spent tremendous resources investing with the Royal Government to build this magnificent building with a proper technical standard for the leaders and government officials to work in and also as a state’s property.
Before coming to the end, I would like to mention some of the important works that need to be addressed as follows:
First- Leaders and officials at the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection must help to maintain and protect this newly built office building to always be in good condition. Furthermore, they must strive to better fulfill their duties in order to ensure the improvement in providing law education to every citizen at the local level as well as helping the Royal Government to identify, suppress and prevent corruption, to eradicate bureaucracy within ministries, institutions, enterprises, public foundations with the aim of strengthening public administration reform and good governance.
Second- All ministries, institutions, departments, provincial and municipal authorities and citizens must cooperate with and make it easy for the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection regarding the legislation and education about the law by linking it with education on ethics.
Third- All ministries, institutions, provincial and municipal authorities, public foundations and public enterprises must cooperate with and make it easy for the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection regarding the inspection on all fields and sectors without any barrier or difficulty.
Finally, I would like to whish Your Venerable Monks, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honorable Guests, Teachers, Students and my dear Compatriots with the Five Gems of Buddhist Blessings.May I now announce the official opening of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection’s Office Building from now on.
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