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Poor pay and corruption

15 June 2006, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Dr. Md. Abdur Rouf, Associate Faculty, Dhaka Center, Royal Roads University, Canada
15 June 2006, 18:00 PM
The all-pervasive corruption prevailing in the bureaucracy of Bangladesh largely emanates from poor pay. Poor pay is the cause corruption the effect. But ironically, we do not hear much about eradicating the cause, rather we hear of drastic measures against the effect. But the harsh reality is that keeping the cause intact, the effect can never be eliminated.

Salaries of the public servants in Bangladesh are very poor not commensurate with the needs of decent living. So, many of them become corrupt against their will. If most of the people start disobeying law law cannot be enforced. Therefore, the anti-corruption measures do not bring the desired changes in bureaucracy. They need to increase salaries of the public servants several times more. If such better pay is provided, most of the public servants will shun corruption. Then, it would be easy to make all out efforts to prevent the small number of civil servants from resorting to corruption. Thus, remarkable changes can be expected.

We have heard very little regarding how to pay the public servants a reasonable salary. But this point should have been given utmost importance to ensure good governance. Our government does not have the financial strength to increase the salary of the civil servants significantly at a time. Such huge resource mobilisation from domestic sources is almost impossible. In the present international context, it is easy to collect funds from donors. Moreover, it involves harsh conditionality sometimes very sour to devour.

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Then, should the situation continue? Is there no way out to pay the civil servants a reasonable salary to set them free from corruption? In the backdrop of non-availability of domestic and foreign resources, a mechanism can be instituted in at least the public offices, which are providing services. A certain amount of facilitation fee can be imposed against provision of services that can be paid by the service takers to the public servants providing service. The facilitation fee can increase pay to the public servants significantly. Thus the public servants can be motivated to work better. Under this mechanism, since provision of services would be speedier, the service-takers would be happy to pay the facilitation fee. Firstly, to test its efficacy, this mechanism can be instituted in several offices. If it works well , it can be extended to other public offices as well.

Mindless persistence with the old notions would lead us to ruination. To bring changes in our bureaucracy leading to people's welfare, let's start thinking up something new.