HKU to turn out graduates in graft
HKU to turn out graduates in graft
Stella Lee
The University of Hong Kong is to launch a postgraduate course in corruption studies with the help of one of the ICAC's top officers.
Deputy Commission Tony Kwok Man-wai, the director of the Independent Commission Against Corruption's operations department, has agreed to take up a voluntary position with the university's School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE).
Mr Kwok joined the ICAC in 1975 and is set to retire in mid-October, when he will turn 55.
He will then take up the post of director of the continuing education school's six-week, postgraduate diploma course in corruption studies.
Space's senior programme direction, Dr Jesucita Sodusta, said it was the first corruption course to be offered in Hong Kong.
She added that the course could offer training not only to anti-graft practitioners in the territory, but also to those from outside Hong Kong.
"With business and accounting corruption becoming a majar problem in many parts of the world, especially in the United States, I wouldn't be surprised if one day, every corporation has an anti-corruption consultant," she said.
She added that lecturers for the course, which will start in November, included local, mainland and international experts on corruption, serving and retired ICAC officers and senior government lawyers.
Mr Kwok said the fact that Hong Kong was launching such a course demonstrated that fighting corruption was high on its agenda. He suggested the course would support the SAR's reputation as a pioneer in combatting corruption.
"The course has the potential of developing Hong Kong as a centre for corruption studies," Mr Kwok said.
One of the course lecturers and an expert on corruption, Professor Michael Johnston from the political science department of Colgate University, in New York, said: "Hong Kong's ICAC is the world's best-known anti-corruption agency and in many ways is the standard against which others are judged. The planned course should be a great opportunity to exchange views and experiences."
He said that Hong Kong University could also explore possible avenues of study with regard to the territory's anti-corruption programme from the mid-1980s onwards. "Young people in Hong Kong had become at least as critical of corruption as were their elders - even more so, by some measures," he said.
"That is nearly unique [sic]: young people elsewhere tend to be more tolerant of corruption."