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Editorial

Graft-ridden service sector

Change must start from within
24 December 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
The picture provided by the survey titled, "Service Sector Corruption: National Households Survey 2010," conducted by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), is stunning, to say the least. The households surveyed shared their experience of 13 service sectors and the period covered was between June 2009 and May of this year. What is even more disconcerting is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. To paraphrase the comments of the chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, this was not the full picture of corruption in the country but only a part, and that prevalence of corruption was more than this survey has revealed. It is not that we have been taken completely by surprise by the survey report. What causes the shockwave about the TIB report is not the existence, of which we are all aware, but the extent to which corruption has permeated in every nook and cranny of the government and non-government service institutions in Bangladesh. It is startling that more than eighty percent of the households in the country had to pay for services they are guaranteed to receive, and which the service providers are obligated to provide, free of cost. It may be in order to quote some figures just to put the issue in perspective. For example, the survey has revealed that 71.9 percent households directly paid bribes for services and that on an average each household paid Tk 4,834, which adds up to Tk. 9,591 crore. It is mind boggling that 88 percent of households that sought service at courts said they had experienced different types of corruption and harassment at the judiciary. And according to the survey, although most people had to cough up money when seeking the services of the judiciary, the frequency of bribe-taking puts the law enforcement agencies on top of the chart of most corrupt service sectors although the incidence of graft taking in the law enforcement agencies has decreased in the last three years. While corruption per se is one of the challenges to good governance and stunts government efforts to deliver the goods to the people, the main cause of our worry is the involvement of two major institutions of the government, that are considered the two most important apparatus for providing good governance, in corruption -- the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies. When rule of law becomes rule of men, and when money is used to buy justice, there is very little confidence that the public can repose in the government to ensure its security. And when people suffer from insecurity, nothing can stem the erosion of public credibility about the government. Admittedly, corruption cannot be made to vanish overnight if it can be made to vanish at all. But the government has to lead the way by showing that it will not countenance corruption. To start with, the oversight agencies must be strengthened, the corrupt at the higher echelons must be held to account, and last but not the least, acknowledge rather than deny that corruption exists, as was done so creditably by the Chief Justice recently, and promise to reform from within.

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