Staff Reporter :
The law enforcement agencies are the most corrupt service sector among 16 categories of entities in Bangladesh, reveals a household survey of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on Tuesday.
The survey showed that, “The law enforcement agencies are the most corrupt service sector (72.5 per cent) followed by the Department of Immigration and Passport (67.3 per cent) and Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (65.4 per cent).
The anti-graft watchdog’s survey further revealed that 89 per cent households think without offering bribes they would not get any service. The TIB revealed this findings tiled ‘Corruption in Service Sector: National Household Survey 2017’ at a press conference at the MIDAS Centre in the city.
Speaking at the conference, Executive Director of TIB Dr Iftekharuzzaman said, being forced to bribes and not getting services without bribes,
it is understood that bribes have been institutionalized.
TIB Chairperson Sultana Kamal said, the culture of settlement with corruption has become part of our lives. It is total disrespect and dishonest.
According to TIB, the top seven corrupt entities and sectors are: law enforcement, passport, BRTA, judiciary, land, education and health.
The households in the country paid an increasing amount of Tk 10688.9 crore bribes in 2017 to the mentioned service sectors, which was Tk 8,821 crore in 2015.
The total amount of bribe paid by the households is equal to 3.4 per cent of the fiscal year 2016-17 national budget, the TIB research said.
According to 2011 national census, total number of households are 3.73 crore in the country. In its latest survey, the TIB has covered 15,581 households to conduct their research.
Overall, around 66.5 per cent households were found to be victims of corruption by the services sector. About 72.5 per cent of household surveyed were victims of corruption by the law enforcement agencies, 67.3 per cent by passport sector, 65.4 per cent by BRTA, 60.5 per cent by judiciary, 44.9 per cent by land services, 42.9 per cent by education sector, 42.5 per cent by health sector, 41.6 per cent agriculture, 38.9 per cent by power sector, 38.3 per cent by gas, 26.7 per cent by local government institution, 12.3 per cent insurance sector, 11.1 per cent by tax and levy, 5.7 per cent banking, 5.4 per cent NGO and 22.0 per cent by other miscellaneous sectors.
According to the TIB research findings, around 72 per cent of household surveyed were victims of corruption by the law enforcement agencies.
Among the surveyed households, 60.7 per cent were found to have offered bribe to the law enforcers, the TIB said.
The amount of estimated per capita bribe stands at Tk 658, which was Tk 533 in 2015.
