FRANCISTOWN: The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) might be constantly attracting seemingly unfair criticism from the media, but its boss says that the media has played a sterling role in the fight against corruption.DCEC boss Rose Seretse was speaking in an interview with Mmegi at a stakeholders dinner hosted by her organisation last week. "We have investigated a lot of cases mostly sourced from stories in various media outlets. "In fact most of those cases we recommended for prosecution have earned convictions from the courts. "Exposing crime is one area that I must commend the local media for," the director told Mmegi.
The media has also been fractional when reporting about cases investigated by the DCEC, Seretse said during the interview."The local media has become fixated with covering cases in which we do not recommend prosecution due to lack of evidence. Most such cases involve very prominent personalities." In most cases they (media) blame the DCEC for failure to recommend such cases for prosecution, but when there is insufficient evidence it is hard to recommend cases for prosecution."What worries me most is that we have made progress in most cases we have investigated, but just because they involved less prominent individuals they were not covered. "The media must be impartial when reporting about the works of the DCEC," she noted."The nature of our job, just like that of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) is always open to criticism. In fact criticism will encourage us to sharpen our work and build a vibrant organisation. We cannot do away with criticism," she said.
