Preventive and educative approaches for reducing corruption

In governance terms, corruption threatens democratic public institutions by permitting the influence of improper interest on the use of public resources and power, and by undermining the confidence of citizens in the legitimate activities of state.

In a developing country like Bangladesh, most effective action against corruption is to raise the awareness of all officers and staff in the public service and increasing the level of control, that is by having matters that would lend themselves to corruption processed by more than one official, or through increased vigilance on the part of superiors.

Code of conduct

A generally applicable code of conduct should be made available to the heads of organisation and other superiors as well as public service personnel. It helps them to respond adequately to incidents and practices where the suspicion of corruption exists. Particular emphasis should be on a consistent supervisory control. Senior officials and heads of organisation should undergo training to acquaint themselves with ways of exercising control and supervisory functions. Concrete guidance on anti-corruption measures should be made available to them so that they can respond in a competent way in an individual case.

Guidance and training for public officials or politicians on codes of conduct, ethics and awareness may be considered as essential element of service. These performances should primarily focus on the legitimate activities of civil servants that can be improved by further training minimising the potential of illegitimate administrative activities. The efforts should be planned specifically to promote the efficiency of the application of laws. Also of fundamental importance is the civil servants' code of ethics, which is normally prepared on the basis of an authorisation by law. This is an undertaking in which representatives of all fields -- trade, commerce, industry, law enforcement agencies, judiciary etc also -- take part, providing expert and professional input.

Before trying to find out the examples of some other countries in reducing corruption in the civil service we may have the definition of corruption. That an office holder and/or person employed in public bodies shall be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment or fine or both if he:

Corruptly accepts or obtains, or agrees to accept or attempts to obtain, from any person, for himself or any other person, any gift or consideration as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do, or for having done or forborne to do, any act in relation to the affairs or business of his department, or for showing or forbearing to show favour or disfavour to any person in relation to such affairs or business;

Corruptly gives or agrees to give or offers any gift or consideration to an official as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do, or for having done or forborne to do, any act in relation to the affairs or business of state or for showing or forbearing to show fervour or disfavour to any person in relation to the affairs of the state;

Knowingly gives to an official or (if he is an official) knowingly uses with intent to deceive the head of his department, any receipt, account or other document in which the department is interested, and which contains any statement which is false or erroneous or defective in any materials particular and which, to his knowledge, is intended to mislead the head of his department.

Now we can refer to the actions or programme undertaken by some countries in reducing corruption, which may be applied in Bangladesh in removing the existing corruption of the country at least to some extent.

Belgium

Government of Belgium has undertaken a programme on combating corruption, the aims being: to make passive corruption a criminal offence to remove the right to hold certain public posts, duties or offices directly or indirectly to prevent any enterprise convicted of corruption for taking part in public procurement and to withdraw approval from entrepreneurs convicted of corruption.

France

In France, organisational management policies, systems and controls are in place to minimise opportunities for corrupt activity particularly in the public sector where line management controls within ministries include inspectorates and finance courts. Even the citizens can lodge complaints aimed at disclosing corrupt activity with the public prosecutor. There is also scope to sue for civil damages. Moreover, corruption risk assessment policy is developed by ministerial policy and inter ministerial policy through the anti corruption service they call SCPC (Service Central de Prevention de la Corruption) which also holds centralised information on preventing and detecting corruption.

Germany

In Germany, they think that the most effective action against corruption is raising the awareness of all staff in the public service and increasing the level of control, e.g. by having matters that would lend themselves to corruption processed by more than one official, or through increased vigilance on the part of superiors. Together with these measures of central importance, the Federal Government has comprehensive catalogue of additional measures to prevent corruptions. Some are:

In areas particularly exposed to corruption and their supervisory bodies, personnel rotation is considered to be an indispensable element of personnel management. Organisational arrangements with regard to both the structure and procedure of authorities are to ensure working processes designed to rule out corruption. A central contact agency should be available to which both staff members and citizens may turn if they have any corruption-related questions or come across problematic situations. A generally applicable code of conduct should be made available to the heads of authorities and other superiors as well as public service personnel that helps them to respond adequately to incidents and practices where the suspicion of corruption exists.

Particular emphasis should be on a consistent supervisory control. Superiors and heads of authorities should undergo training to acquaint themselves with ways of exercising control and supervisory functions. Concrete guidance on anti-corruption measures should be made available to them so that they can respond in a competent way in an individual case.

They think that corruption must be punished uncompromisingly. Every staff member found guilty of corrupt practices must be held liable for the damage incurred. A corruption register is maintained to prevent firms that are under suspicion for corrupt practices from unhindered participation in the competition for public contracts; the circumstances of the individual case is taken into account when excluding a firm from corruption.

Japan

In Japan the National Public Service Law provides legislation relating to the discipline of national public employees in the regular service. It includes the prohibition of any act which may cause discredit to the public service. The violation of this legislation is punishable under the disciplinary punishment rules provided by the National Public Service Law.

The Public Service Officials Ethics Codes of Conduct are established by every ministry and agency and applied to its public service officials. They prescribe prohibited matters about contacts with concerned businessman.

There is policy, based on cabinet division, that due consideration should be given in the appointment of national public employees so that an individual officer shall not occupy a post responsible for budget implementation or licences for a long period of time. In addition, various kinds of training for ethics awareness are provided.

Every ministry and agency has managers of the public service discipline and a general manager of the public service discipline.

As one of the measures to enhance the high level of ethical standards in the national public service, the National Personnel Authority is currently reviewing the disciplinary punishment system.

Korea

In Korea, the act on ethics in public service aims to secure fairness in public service by preventing public officials from accumulating unlawful property. The Act institutionalises the registration and disclosure of the reported property of both public officials and candidates for elected public office. The Act covers high-level officers in public service-related organisations as well as all public officials in the executive agencies, the legislature and the judicial bodies. Under the law, national and local public officials higher than grade 4 (director of equivalent level in the central government) as well as office holders of selected positions in public service-related organisations have to report their property to the registration agency and renew their report annually. The registered property of public officials higher than grade 1 (deputy minister or equivalent level in the central government) shall be made public through the official gazette or public bulletins.

The Public Service Pension Law reduces the pension by half of public officials who received penalty, impeachment of disciplinary dismissal on grounds of corruption.

Among Korean citizens, the telephone number 188 is well known. By dialing 188, any citizen can report corrupt actions of public officials to the board of Audit and Inspection.

The Korean government regards anti-corruption as one of the most important tasks that it has to resolve for successful administrative reform and national development in the 21-st century.

Reduction of discretionary power

Finally as for Bangladesh the main remedial measure against further spread of corruption should be to employ the power of modern information technology to reduce civil servant's discretion and make government more transparent. The more discretion government employees have and the less visible their actions are the greater is the potential for abuse and corruption. IT has tremendous potential to reduce discretion by making transactions impersonal and to make information on government performance readily accessible to the public. There is an incredibly wide range of possible applications of IT to reduce discretion and increase transparency -- the scope seems almost limitless.

Another really effective deterrent measure will be to apply stiffer sanctions, especially jail sentences, for corrupt behaviour; the fair sanction is an important deterrent. The possibilities of suffering social ostracism, financial penalties or incarceration discourage people from taking the risk of engaging in corrupt behaviour. One of the reasons that corruption flourishes in Bangladesh is that hardly anybody is ever punished for it. We all know that there is massive loan default, tax and customs evasion, power theft, procurement corruption and extortion in Bangladesh. Yet detection and punishment of these offences is very rare. The weak application of sanctions reflects the deficiencies of the anti-corruption machinery and a judicial system in which justice is easily deferred. A combination of political will and remedies are needed to make sanctions a more potent deterrent to corruption in Bangladesh.

Zahid Hossain, a retired government official is now associated with Bangladesh Enterprise Institute as Senior Research Fellow.