Petty bribery on the rise

THE 2009 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) released by Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) indicates that petty bribery is on the rise, with the police considered the most frequent recipients in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The report said the number of respondents in Sub-Saharan Africa region who reported paying a bribe in the previous year was much higher than the global average, which was 26 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa, as against 13 per cent at the global level.
It also revealed that people continued to see political parties as the most corrupt in their countries, whilst the private sector resorted to corruption to shape state policies.
The Executive Secretary of GII Mr Vitus Adaboo Azeem, a local chapter of Transparency International (TI) who released both the global and Ghana report in Accra last Wednesday, called for more civic education to sensitise Ghanaians to the effect of corruption.
“This calls for a change of attitude and a system of democratic practice where all citizens are equal before the law and where meritocracy rules over and above all other considerations”, he stated.
Corruption, he expressed, had a devastating effect not only on individuals but also on the country as a whole, leading to lack of access to quality healthcare, education for children and portable water, with the poor always being the hardest hit.
In Ghana, he said a total of 1, 190 respondents were randomly selected from one municipal capital and one district capital from each of the ten regions in the country.
“The respondents were asked to rank six institutions on their perception of how corrupt they are on a scale of one to five with five being the very corrupt”, he said and emphasised that, “overall public officials or civil service were perceived to be the most corrupt sector in Ghana.
At the global level, the report which was released by TI in Berlin, Germany yesterday revealed that, “people continue to see government as ineffective in the fight against corruption” whilst at the local level, the GII report indicated that 58 per cent of respondents in Ghana felt that government’s efforts at fighting corruption were quite effective.
About half of the respondents at the global level, according to Mr Azeem, had the perception that the private sector and the judiciary were affected by corruption, whilst 43 per cent of interviewees believed that the media was affected by corruption.
The global survey covered a total of 73,132 people in 69 countries around the world, including ten African countries namely, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia.
The report was based on this year’s world-wide public opinion survey of citizens’ views on and experiences on corruption conducted by Transparency International (TI), in the fight against corruption world-wide.
It assessed the extent to which key institutions and public services were perceived to be corrupt, beside measuring public views on government’s efforts to fight corruption.
The Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Most Reverend Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, a member of GII urged the media to uphold the integrity of the profession and use its power creatively by balancing stories and not to show partially.
He challenged journalists to join the crusade and respect the rule of law in their endeavours, considering the fact that journalist or the media had been found to be corrupt as well.
“The media should stand up against ‘soli’, to avoid conflict of interest and use the pen for creativity and not for destruction”, he emphasised.
A Senior lecturer at the School of Administration, University of Ghana, Legon, Mr Kwame Gyasi advocated that the fight against corruption ought to be a personal crusade and not left in the hands of the leadership of institutions.
He bemoaned the situation where educated personalities tended to defend those who were guilty of the crime and pointed out that “education is to reform people’s character and not to deform their character”.