Staff Reporter :
About 70.9 percent of households have been victims of corruption while taking services from 17 sectors in the country, the 2021 survey on corruption in service sectors shows.
Country’s law enforcement agencies are the most corrupt as per the survey report of the Transparency International of Bangladesh (TIB) conducted in 2021.
The report found alarming rate of increasing corruptions in the country’s service sectors and corruption is continuing to be institutionalised.
The survey finds the seven most corrupt sectors in which law enforcement agencies topped others, followed by passport, BRTA, judicial services, health, local government institutions and land services.
According to TIB, the 74.4 percent households who came across the services of the law enforcement agencies had been the victims of corruptions while 70.5 percent became victims in passport services, 68.3 percent in BRTA, 56.8 percent in judicial services, 48.7 percent in health, 46.6 percent in local government institutions and 46.6 percent in land services.
The TIB revealed the survey report in a press conference in its office in the capital.
According to TIB report, the overall bribery rate in 2021 was 40.1 percent, with the top three sectors receiving bribes were passports, law enforcement agencies and BRTA.
Among the victims of bribery, 72.1 percent mentioned that they did not get services without bribery, which means that bribery continues to be institutionalised, the report said.
The survey also found that each household paid on an average Tk 6,636 as bribe in 2021 and the three highest amount of bribery taking sectors were – insurance, judicial and gas services.
The estimated total amount of bribery at the national level was around Tk 108,301.1 million, which is 5.9 percent of the national budget (revised) for the fiscal year 2020-21 and 0.4 percent of the GDP of Bangladesh, it added.
TIB has been conducting a national survey in service sectors since 1997 to identify the nature and extent of corruption in service sectors and it has so far conducted nine such surveys.
Comparing with the previous surveys, it found that the overall rate of corruption in the service sectors has increased compared with 2017. In 2021, while the rate of corruption in the same sectors was found to be 70.8 percent, this rate was 66.5 percent in 2017. Compared with 2017, the rate of bribes or unauthorised payments has decreased in 2021 but the amount of bribes has increased.
On the other hand, corruption has increased in the service sectors as a whole due to the increase in other irregularities and corruption.
However, TIB sees the underway digitalization process in some sectors, but it is not fully effective in some service sectors and thus corruption in some sectors remains the same like in law enforcement agencies, passport, BRTA, etc and has increased in some sectors like local government institutions, NGOs, insurance, etc.
The survey also finds that the corruption rate in agriculture, education and health has come down in the report of 2021 compared with 2017.
The survey also finds that the rural households experienced higher incidence of bribery compared with urban settings.
On the other hand, the burden of corruption is higher on low-income households than on high-income households.
The survey result also shows that female service recipients were victims of corruption more than male service recipients in some sectors like health, local government institutions, other sectors while males were victims of corruption more than women in certain sectors like education, public services.
In addition, service recipients aged 36 and above are relatively more victims of corruption compared with service recipients below 35 years.
TIB recommended for legal accountability, transparency and accountability of the service providing institutions, digitalization in service providing intuitions, people’s participation through public hearing, political will and grievance redress mechanism.
