Date : 2014-09-19

http://observerbd.com/details.php?id=44017

Corruption and Public Servants Act
M S Siddiqui

Bangladesh society has branded the honest officials as foolish and the dishonest officers as cleaver.
This permissive attitude is often shown by a passive individual in confronting a corrupt act by
another person in his/her surroundings. This attitude towards perpetrators of corruption needs to be
changed to produce a deterrent effect to corruption.

Corruption is a complex phenomenon, where it persists; everyone has to pay the price for it.
Corruption is rife, particularly in the public service, affecting both welfare of Bangladeshi citizens
and the country's ability to do greater external funding and investment.

Some of the conditions that contribute to the prevalence of corruption include economic factors,
particularly poverty; complexities in bureaucratic process; and administrative inefficiencies.
Corruption occurs massively at all government departments -the executive, legislative, judiciary,
state-owned enterprises (SOE), and financial institutions- as well as in other parts of our society.
Both grand and petty corruption, for example, might also be classified as administrative or political
(UNDP 2008), incidental, systemic or systematic (Kpundeh 1998), passive or active (UNODC 2009),
a way of life or a fact of life (Quah 2007), well-organised or chaotic (Mauro 1998:13), administrative
corruption or state capture (Hellman and Kaufmann 2001). The effects of corruption in public
administration can be particularly pernicious. Corruption in public administration not only makes the
administration ineffective, but also makes it untrustworthy to the citizens in fair and impartial
application of public resources and authority.

In addition, bribery and other malpractices related to the licensing and execution of businesses are
major obstacles in the development of investment and businesses in Bangladesh as per study of
World Economic Forum. Regulations that are still open to the possibility of overlapping of licenses
and questionable legal certainty are also common problems in business. In the international business
world, there is an index of Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) or ratings for the ease of doing business
in certain countries issued by the World Bank. Bangladesh Ranks 109 in cost of doing business
during 2013 according to World Business Index.

Public officers need to be trained on issues of integrity and ethics and the ethical behaviour should be
part of the general requirements for one to get employed in public service, and the private sector
should be encouraged to do the same. The cultivation of culture of probity and accountability within
public authorities depends on the culture of the officials and staff themselves; changes could be made
if such officers were educated, cultured and really have the desire to work for the benefit of all. There
is no curriculum in civil service training academy on corruption, the number one problem of the
country. For raising awareness against corruption and about ways to prevent it with continuous
occupational training for officials public education campaigns should be organised about the harm of
corruption and the successes of anti-corruption efforts.
All the citizens are to be engaged in preventing corruption and recognizing the overriding importance
of tailoring anti-corruption strategies. People's engagement for improved transparency and
accountability is pre-condition to success of anti corruption drives. Citizens with specialized
knowledge about type and extent of corruption can play crucial role in policy making.

Insights from many more disciplines now contribute to our understanding of corruption. Social
psychology, organizational theory, regulatory theory, business ethics, criminology and behavioural
economics, among others, all have something to offer to the corruption prevention endeavour. These
disciplines indicate roles for citizens beyond penalties and compliance.

Building the capacity of people and civil society to participate effectively in all of the anti corruption
efforts and reporting corruption, complying with regulation, receiving services or as commercial
partners is vital in this regard.

At the present situation, citizen has a perception that the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) has not
being playing an effective role in prevention of corruption. But ACC has been established with a
vision to diminish bribery and other types of corruption from the country. As pledge bound to
decrease corruption among key groups, particularly public officials and to improve its image, the
ACC may initiate corruption prevention initiatives considering local circumstances particularly, the
differences between international, national, local and organisational contexts and the nature of
various public sectors.

The common perception about the ACC is that its duty is to investigate and offer punishment to the
corrupt. But as prevention of corruption is the main objective of ACC and its mission is 'to
relentlessly combat, control and prevent corruption', the commission's duty is to initiate all sorts of
measures to discourage corruption. Recently, the ACC has developed a new vision to create a strong
anti corruption culture; hate permeates throughout the whole society.

It has adapted a communication strategy 2015-19 (ACCCS 3015-19) to prevent corruption. Various
sections of the strategy are divided into three categories: First, Corruption prevention & education,
secondly, Public relations and investigation and finally, Prosecution. The mission of this strategy is
to inform the perpetrators that 'corruption does not pay'. The message is corrupt officials will be
identified, investigated, prosecuted, sanctioned and their illegally acquired assets will be confiscated.
Furthermore, it gives a signal that corruption is a 'low reward and high risk' incident.
The ACC also set a set of actions by different stakeholders including media, citizens, private sector
and civil society organizations.

Whistleblowers play an important role to combat corruption revealing corruption information from
inside the organisations. As they are in a vulnerable position, lack of support to them may silent them
forever. It is ethical responsibility of all to protect them. The ACC has planned a widen the coalition
by explaining that everyone gains from fighting corruption and corruption is a development issue, not
only criminal issue. A better understanding of the relationship between corruption and societal
factors, such as human rights, gender equality, press freedom, social trust and the effectiveness of
institutions outside the public administration can accelerate the efforts.

The ACC has a very ambitious preventive programme with an intention to go to the source of
corruption with social interaction of public officials and citizen relationship, making personal appeal
to villagers, citizens receiving public services and use cost effective preventive strategy and utilise
partnership with all stakeholders, especially the private sector businesses who are worse victim of
corruption.

But the government initiative to enact a Public Servant Act with a purported provision to restrict
investigation and indictments of government officials without prior permission from government
shall stand in the way of corruption prevention drive. The proposed law reportedly bars citizens from
filing case against bureaucrats for corruption or other criminal offences. The initiative to incorporate
such provision will jeopardize the whole exercise of the ACC.

The writer is a legal economist. He can be reached shah@banglachemical.com
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