Yara Aquino and Luciana Vasconcelos
Reporters - Agência Brasil

Brasilia - In testimony before the Post Office Parliamentary Investigative Commission's subcommission on corruption (sub-relatoria de Normas de Combate à Corrupção), Claudio Weber Abramo, the executive director of an ONG, Transparency Brazil, declared that existing laws on access to government information must be complied with if corruption in Brazil is to be reduced.

Abramo cited the problem his organization has in discovering the exact number of jobs in the government occupied by people who have not passed civil service exams. He says he estimates the number at 22,000, with another 180,00 in state and local administrations.

Meanwhile, in separate testimony, the chairman of the Palacio do Planalto Ethics Commission (Comissão de Ética Pública da Presidência da República), Fernando Neves, declared that there should be more transparency in the activities of government agencies. He called for making public the agendas of authorities so it could be known who they were seeing and why. "This is an obligation of any officeholder," said Neves. He also said there should be a reduction in the number of government employees who have not passed civil service exams. "We need to know who put these people in their jobs and how they got their jobs," concluded Neves.

Translation: Allen Bennett