Pakistan

TI declares current govt more corrupt than last one

Express June 01, 2010

KARACHI: Transparency International (TI) Pakistan predictably claimed that the current PPP-lead government is “more corrupt” as compared to the previous governments, placing Pakistan on number 42 –five places up from last year– in the list of 180 countries around the world. This is not the first time the TI has been critical of a PPP government.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, Chairman TI Syed Adil Gilani said that the National Corruption Perception Survey 2010 indicates that the overall Corruption in 2010 has increased from Rs195 billion in 2009 to Rs223 billion, while 70 per cent of Pakistanis say that the present government is more corrupt than previous government.

He said most people considered the previous federal government to be cleaner but did not qualify his statement as to how he came to this conclusion. Gilani added that from a provincial perspective, Punjab is the only province where the present provincial government is rated to be cleaner than the previous one. He added that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is rated as the most corrupt province, but did not say how this was determined.

The chairman said that the police and power sectors maintained their ranking as the top two most corrupt sectors, while land and administration sector ranked as the third most corrupt sector.

“Corruption in the judiciary, education and local government has also increased as compared to 2009, whereas Federal Board of revenue departments –Customs and Taxation– are ranked as the least corrupt sectors” he added.

In terms of bribery, Land Administration is rated as the most corrupt sector where each incident of corruption per act is of Rs46,414, whereas the total bribery in the other nine sectors is Rs 127,728.

Furthermore, the chairman said that corruption is the root cause of poverty, illiteracy, terrorism, shortage of electricity and food, and lack of governance in Pakistan. He added that the country’s credibility is at the lowest level, which is evident from the lack of funds in the last two years from the Friends of Pakistan Trust Fund, managed by the World Bank.

He said the most corrupt sector is tendering, which takes away at least 40 per cent of Pakistan’s development budget, clear from the recent results of transparent tendering for transportation of sugar in the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP). TCP has saved at least Rs49.3 million by implementing Public Procurement Rules 2004, which is 40 per cent lower than the cost of the same work awarded last year.

Violators of Pakistan Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) are listed as BOI, Wapda, CDA, NHA, CCP, SECP, SBP, Customs, EOBI, ECP, EPZA, FIA, MOI, FPSC, FOS, GPA, Islamabad HC, JPCL, MoH, MoInv, MoPA, MoIT, MoPriv, MoZakat, NIH, NSCS, PCB, PEPA, PHF, NLC, NIC, and PID.

Chairman TI stated that the government needs to address its corruption, as the judiciary did by declaring it under the Judicial Policy with a zero tolerance for corruption, and as the Pakistan Armed Forces did by withdrawing its active senior officers from civilian postings.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2010.

COMMENTS (6)

AliW | 14 years ago | Reply I downloaded the National Corruption Perception Survey 2010 by the Transparency International-Pakistan. The report is biased without an iota of doubt. Some of the points are given below for the readers to make up their mind about: 1. This was the 4th National Corruption Perception Survey. The chronology of surveys was in 2002, 2006, 2009 and now in 2010. In times of a non popular government and a military ruler, 2 surveys took place in a span of 6 years while in the times of PPP government (an elected, democratic government), 2 surveys have taken place in 2 years. This clearly shows the bias of the TIP. In order to have a credible survey, it should be held on a continuous basis and intervals should be well planned. 2. IBA Karachi led the survey along with Gift University – Gujranwala, Gomal University – DI Khan and Sarhad University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar. The supervising professor Prof. Shabih Haider of IBA says in the report that “Institute of Business Administration, Karachi takes complete responsibility of analysis and ensures complete integrity”. My question is who in IBA approved the survey? Was IBA paid any amount for conducting this survey? I believe that TIP would be claiming money from the parent body for the survey and report. I feel that Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Dean and Director of IBA be asked about this matter. IBA is known for its integrity and by being partner with TIP, it is tainting not just its name but also of Pakistan. 3. In all 5200 was the sample size, which I feel should not be sufficient for a sensitive exercise like this. For a survey of this magnitude and importance, a bigger sample size should have been taken. My friends in Marketing Research tell me that even for a shampoo, a bigger sample size is chosen while the way interviews are conducted i.e. whom to interview is a scientific process and time intensive 4. The cities in which the survey was conducted is also a surprising revelation: In Punjab, the survey was conducted in all 5 northern and central Punjab cities which are controlled by the PML-N. No city of Southern Punjab where the PPP has a clear majority was included in the survey. The names of the cities are: Sialkot, Gujranwala, Daska, Lahore and Chakwal. Similarly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, data was collected from Peshawar, Haripur, Mansehra and Abbotabad. Needless to say 3 out of these four cities are dominated by the PML-N/Q whereas the Pakhtoon dominated cities were not involved other than Peshawar. For sure we can see bias against the ANP and PPP. 5. According to the report NAB was “believed as a good institution”. Can one ask respondents as to how many have dealt with NAB? 6. The second highest occupation in which they took the survey was students. Students in all were 20.2% of the respondents. My personal feeling is that students were from the same institutions where the survey was conducted. 7. How have they come up with Average Expenditure on Bribery? That is quite mind boggling. Do people keep a track of amount they have paid for bribery? People pay bribes to get their work done. Did they ask questions from respondents that how much monetary gain they had by paying for the bribes? 8. Out of 5200 respondents, only 93 people have paid income tax which is a mere 1.78%. Did they ask people why they haven’t paid income tax or filed returns? In all, it was a biased survey, the results of which are quite obvious and also portrayed wrongly by the media.

Nony Mous | 14 years ago | Reply Missed the good old days when theft resulted in hand amputations. You guys agree or what?

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AliW | 14 years ago | Reply I sincerely hope that the Express Tribune allows posting of the following links which belong to another newspaper, which should be good enough to tell Mr. Gillani and his TIP as to how less corrupt is the Punjab government: Sasti Roti scheme caused irregular expenditure of Rs1bn [link text][1]http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=223896 Punjab S&GA audit objects to Rs614m spending [link text][2]http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=230444 It seems TIP is following an agenda to malign the government at the center. [1]: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=230444 [2]: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=230444

Qasim Fayyaz | 14 years ago | Reply This is sad, TIP is following an agenda against the current government. God knows how Adil Gillani can say that punjab government under the PML N is better than any!

Farhan Danish (Urdu Blogger) | 14 years ago | Reply

Shame on current govt

Nadir El Edroos | 14 years ago | Reply Your seem to have skipped the part where: "TIP advises Ministry of Defence to issue directive to DHAs, MES, CB,CAA, HMCs, HIT, FWO & SoP to implement PPRA."

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