War on corruption should not be left to PCB only

By Nyasigo Kornel

Corruption is still very prevalent and has reaching negative impact on quality service delivery and the fight against poverty.

According to the speech of the Permanent Secretary President’s Office, Public Service Management, George Yambesi, delivered to the government executives, the fight against corruption requires effort of each and every one of us.

He said that if we want to rid the public service of this malaise, Tanzanians should not leave the task to the few insitutions like the Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCB).

In his address at the closig ceremony of a course on leadership and ethics for government executives in Bagamoyo, he strasses that Tanzanians should address corruption problem by identifying possible loopholes in laws, regulations and practices and deal with them immediately and decisively.

He emphasized that leaders are not obliged not only to talk about integrity but to operate themselves at high level of integrity.

Frankly speaking, political corruption is the most rampat in Africa, Tanzania in particular, it is misuse of public power for illegitimate, usually secret and private advantage.

Corruption poses a serious development challenge. In the political realm, it undermines democracy and good governance by flouting or even subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections and in legislative bodies reduces accountability and distorts representation in policymaking; corruption in the judiciary compromises the rule of law; and corruption in public administration results in the unfair provision of services.

More generally, corruption erodes the institutional capacity of government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and public offices are bought and sold. At the same time, corruption undermines the legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and tolerance.

Corruption also undermines economic development by generating considerable distortions and inefficiency. In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with officials, and the risk of breached agreements or detection.

Although some claim corruption reduces costs by cutting red tape, the availability of bribes can also induce officials to contrive new rules and delays. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it also distorts the playing field, shielding firms with connections from competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms.

Corruption also regenerates economic distortations in the public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects to conceal or pave way for such dealings, thus further distorting investment. Corruption also lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, and increases budgetary pressures on government.

Economists estimated that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight from 30 sub-Saharan countries totalled $187bn, exceeding those nations' external debts. In the case of Africa, one of the factors for this behaviour was political instability, and the fact that new governments often confiscated previous government's corruptly-obtained assets. This encouraged officials to strash their wealth abroad, out of reach of any future expropriation.

Forms of corruption vary, but the most common are patronage, bribery, extortion, influence peddling, fraud, embezzlement, and nepotism.

While corruption often facilitates criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and criminal prostitution, it is not restricted to these organized crime activities, and it does not always support or shield other crimes.

What constitutes corruption differs depending on the country or jurisdiction. Certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, police and prosecutors have broad discretion over who to arrest and charge, and the line between discretion and corruption can be difficult to draw, as in racial profiling. In countries with strong interest group politics, practices that could easily constitute corruption eslewhere are sometimes sanctified as official group preferances.

It takes two to create corruption: giving and taking bribes. In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of public life, making it extremely difficult to stay in business without resorting to bribes.

In the political arena, it is difficult to prove corruption, but impossible to prove its absence. For this reason, there are often rumors about many politicians.

Even legal measures such as these have been argued to be legalised corruption, in that they often favor the political status quo. Minor parties and independents often argue that efforts to rein in the influence of contributions do little more than protect the major parties with guaranteed public funding while constraining the possibility of private funding by outsiders.

The course on leadership and ethics for government executives is jointly run by Tanzania Global Development Learning centre (TGDLC), Tanzania Public Service College and Leading Initiatives Worldwide and it is sponsored by JICA.

According to the course course cordinator Abdularahman Mdimu of TGDLC, he emphasized graduants to create networking among themselves just to enhance the knowledge obtained so as to remind themselves of ethics conducts in service delivery.

Mdimu said that TGDLC as a capacity building component has established this service delivery in joint with TPSC to open theoportunities for th etwo institutions to delivery the course programs to Ministry Department Agencies and also look beyond use of video cnference technology.


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