The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) needs about Ksh 4.8 billion to effectively fight corruption trace and recover assets and hire staff, EACC Chief Executive Officer Twalib Mbarak says.

Mbarak while speaking in Mombasa said that the Commission needs to hire 750 additional staff to bolster the workforce and accelerate the agencies approved operations.

“I can tell you, budget is the biggest challenge we are facing as an organization. We are operating on a budget of Ksh 3.2 billion in a year and 69 per cent of that budget goes to recurrent expenditure. We have not talked of our operations,” added Mbarak.

He said a paltry 31 per cent of the total budget allocated to the Commission is utilized on the operations, leaving the Commission struggling to carry out its other mandate including prevention, education and public awareness campaigns and system reviews for public agencies.

“All these activities need a lot of money. When you have 31 per cent of the entire budget being used for operations alone, you can see we are constrained. We have not talked of salaries and allowances,” added Mbarak.

The EACC boss in addition cited high employee turnover in his organization as another challenge hampering its operations.

Further, Mbarak said that the agency had invested enormous resources to train some of the skilled investigators who have since moved to other local, regional and international institutions in search of greener pastures.

Mbarak indicated that the staff exodus started 16 years ago after the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) froze increments of salaries and allowances in the public service.