Most Pakistanis perceive govt departments as corrupt

Fafen finds Baloch most likely, Fata least likely to perceive govt as corrupt

ISLAMABAD: Most Pakistanis are convinced that some corruption prevails in the government departments, a survey showed.

Conducted in February 2016, the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) surveyed 6,030 randomly selected people at 603 locations in all national and provincial assembly constituencies to understand voting behaviour and factors influencing it.



Fafen asked these respondents whether they had interacted with any of the 25 listed government departments over the past six months, including education, health, Wapda, Sui Gas, police, courts, revenue, election commission, irrigation, Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Zakat and Ushr, post office, PTCL, forest, traffic police, 1122, national highways and motorway police, NADRA, municipality, utility stores, railways, PIA, FBR, water and sewerage and local councils (Union Council, Union Committee, Rural and Neighbourhood Council).



The survey found that nearly two-thirds of the people who had engaged with government offices, or around 64 per cent, believed that corruption levels at the 25 selected government departments were either very high or somewhat high.

Interestingly, men (72 per cent) were more likely to say corruption levels were higher than women (54 per cent). This is maybe due to the fact that men have greater interaction and engagement with government institutions than women.



Balochistan (82 per cent) was significantly ahead in public perception about corruption levels in government departments as compared to the other provinces and regions. It was followed by Sindh at 74 per cent , 72 per cent in ICT, 68 per cent in Punjab, 52 per cent in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and eight per cent in Fata.

Further, there were 332 instances where respondents said they had directly witnessed public employees accepting bribe with the highest number of incidents witnessed in Punjab at 206 – around 12 per cent of the respondents who had recently engaged with government offices. It was followed by Sindh where 106 (10.6 per cent) respondents engaged with public offices saw such an incident. Only four per cent in Balochistan and one per cent in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa witnessed such incidents in their respective provinces.

The survey findings are generalisable to the adult Pakistani population nationally and provincially but not for Islamabad Capital Territory or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The respondents included were 49 per cent in Punjab, 16 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, eight per cent in Balochistan, 22 per cent in Sindh, one per cent in Islamabad Capital Territory and four per cent in Fata.



Among those surveyed, 46 per cent were women and 54 per cent adult men. About 59 per cent of the interviewees were between the ages of 18 and 35 years while 41 per cent were over the age of 35.

Most of those surveyed were literate with 62 per cent of the respondents educated till at least primary level, while 34 per cent of respondents had never been to school or had dropped out before completing their primary level. Only 3.8 per cent of respondents had attended madrassas while 0.2 per cent attended vocational institutions.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2016.