| PCCB 'has eye on mobile cash transfer' | Send to a friend |
| Monday, 06 September 2010 10:35 |
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By Mkinga Mkinga The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) has in its hands a technology to monitor and identify those who use electronic money transfer to bribe others. As General Election approaches there are reports that candidates and voters have decided to go high tech and use mobile money transfer systems to exchange bribes. Speaking to this paper last week, the PCCB director general Dr Edward Hoseah said his office had noticed the loophole and went to work immediately. He said luckily they have come up with technology which, in collaboration with mobile phone companies, they will be able to trace the mobile funds transactions. Without going into details, Dr Hoseah said they are working on several reports regarding some transactions which they manage to detect. Bribing voters through mobile money transfer was mooted recently after PCCB put up tight security which made the ‘common’ forms of bribing impossible to implement. “We are investigating some transactions and we will see the results soon,” said Dr Hoseah. Currently there are about three mobile money transfer services in the country which are M-PESA provided by Vodacom, Tigo Pesa and Zap which is under Zain. Itr does not one to have a bank account to transfer money. The mobile money transfer systems were designed to provide customers with increased security and flexibility, reducing the need to carry cash and ensuring payments between friends and family remain secure. They allow receive money and send money to friends and family as well as sending and receiving money to the bank accounts. But the Vodacom head of public relations and corporate social responsibility Ms Mwamvita Makamba, told The Citizen during an interview last week that the mobile company has not received any complaints from any organisation including PCCB, on abuse of its mobile money transfer system. She said their M-PESA service is meant at sending and receiving money to their customers, but maintained that their system is easy to trace as subscribers are registered. “We cannot control who is sending money to who and on what purpose... though the system is very transparent and easy to trace who were involved in transactions as longer as they are registered,” Ms Makamba said. She pledged her company readiness to cooperate with PCCB and other authorities if they will need assistance to stamp out corruption through M-PESA. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
