Kathmandu, Dec 22, One in three people who dealt with public services paid bribes in Nepal, a survey report published by Transparency International Thursday said.
The regional report on corruption in South Asia revealed that about 32 Nepalese had paid bribes to public service providers in the past twelve months to speed things up.
The organization’s corruption perception index 2011 ranked Nepal as the 154th country in the world and second most corrupt country in South Asia in terms of perceived level of public-sector corruption.
Similarly, the survey showed that the political parties were perceived to be the most corrupt institutions. The parliament or legislature and police were listed as the 2nd and 3rd corrupt institutions respectively.
About 53.4 per cent of surveyed people felt that corruption had increased in the past three years in the country demonstrating peoples’ heightened level of frustrations towards the system.
It was found that in Nepal 38.9 per cent people had bribed customs service, followed by 27.5 per cent for land services and 24.1 per cent for tax revenues in the past twelve months for various reasons.
A small number, about 8 per cent, said that they had bribed to receive the services they were entitled to.
Three quarters of Nepali had bribed the service providers to speed things up.
Approximately 32.3 per cent Nepali households had to pay approximately less than Rs. 2,130 while 2.2 per cent families had paid bribes exceeding Rs. 35,000 for receiving services from different sectors in the year.
Nearly a quarter of Nepalese felt that the government’s action on fighting corruption was very ineffective. Only a mere 10.1 per cent of Nepali people perceived that the government’s attitude towards corruption was generating positive results.
Majority of respondents of the survey conferred their confidence on the media as the most trusted institution to fight corruption in Nepal.
Telephonic interviewing was part of the methodology carried out in Nepal by Gallup Pakistan for the survey.
According to RSS, a study carried out at grassroots level reveals that Nepal has witnessed rise in institutional corruption and that the bodies to check the trend have not been mobilized and managed effectively, he added.
The state machineries and agencies to manage day-to-day public life and development works are also invariably affected due to corruption and the anti-graft bodies like Commission for the Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has been without leadership for a long time, states the working paper presented at the programme, calling for the massive reforms in this connection.
Presenting the corruption index of Nepal, Thapa criticized the government for failing to implement zero tolerance to corruption.
Indian representative of the TI, Anupama Jha also admitted the high prevalence of corruption in India.
‘The Indian government has also not effectively worked to check corruption rife across the country and the graft has been rooted in government and non-government organizations in a massive scale’, she further said.
Likewise, Bangladeshi representative of the TI, Sajjad Hussein said that the state should address fundamental rights of people to control level of corruption.
Ilam Mohhamud of the Maldives underlined the need to take initiatives from grassroots level to make corruption a history.
Sri Lankan representative Sang Bijaya Tung also admitted that corruption is all-pervasive in political parties, social sector and bureaucracy in Sri Lanka and that the efforts to check corruption have not been effective.
A report incorporating people’s recommendations and comments as to what
types of actions are effective to slash corruption was also made public on the occasion.
No comments:
Post a Comment