One of the topics covered by VSO's pre-departure SKWID (SKills for Working In Development of course !) training course is the issue of corruption, which is a major problem in many developing countries. From the distant remove of pure, umblemished Ireland (ha ha) I used to think of corruption in developing countries as being related to vast sums being siphoned off foreign aid by corrupt government officials and politicians. When I arrived in Indonesia, the first seven weeks was spent in language training every morning with local orientation taking place most afternoons. One of the topics covered in this orientation was corruption in Indonesia and this opened my eyes as to how widespread a problem this is. There are many ways by which corruption is measured - one of the most well known indices is the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) produced by Transparency International, about which organisation you can read more HERE.
In the latest index (2008) Indonesia is ranked at number 126 out of 180 countries. Somalia is at the bottom of the table and Denmark at the top. Ireland is at number 16, the same ranking as the UK.
When I started hearing more about corruption in Indonesia, and after living here for a while, I began to realise how endemic it was and how it affects every level of society. Here are three specific examples from my own very limited personal experience :
1. Booking airline tickets here is a rather haphazard affair. Recently some friends (fellow volunteers) who were leaving the island but couldn't get seats for the next four days eventually managed to get tickets by buying them at their hotel from an airline employee who happened to have some "spare" tickets which had "originally been bought for some family members who were now unable to travel" (yeah, right - a nice easy one to swing for an airline official). The tickets were of course in the wrong names but for an "administration charge" (paid in cash at the hotel) this was all sorted out.
2. When someone dies here (and there are usually between 1 and 3 deaths a day in the hospital) the remains are brought back to the home village almost immediately for burial the following day. This removal is done by the hospital hearse and the family have to pay for the transport. However, in many cases, the money is paid directly by the family to the driver and it never makes it into the hospital accounting system.
3. The lack of systems and controls means that it is very easy for cash payments to quietly disappear (and almost all payments here are cash, credit cards and cheques are non-existent for ordinary people). Medicines sold from the hospital pharmacy are cheaper if you don't want a receipt - now, why would that be do you think ?
There are many other examples but there are a few fundamental problems :
1. Systems - most organisations have very simple or almost non existent accounting controls in place.
2. Money - salaries for most employees are very low, making the opportunity to supplement your income quite attractive.
3. Cutlure - unfortunately, this is now so much part of the system that it is almost seen as an entitlement by many and as a semi-legitimate means of supplementing your meagre salary. Add to this the Asian reluctance to tackle problems in a face-to-face confrontational way and it is easy to see how these situations are allowed to continue.
The recently re-elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (commonly known as SBY), has pledged to do his bit to improve Indonesia's corruption problem and things do seem to be improving with the establishment of the Corruption Eradication Commission. However, this topic has hit the headlines here again this week with the uncovering of an alleged plot by senior police officials aimed at weakening the commission by falsely implicating commission officials in bribery allegations. This has now led to the resignation of a deputy Attorney general and a senior police officer and more fallout is expected.
You can keep up with this story at the Jakarta Post (story HERE) or at the BBC's South Asia site HERE.
How on earth can such a problem be eradicated? I am speechless.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite story of endemic petty corruption involves a bank official in Barclays bank in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe where I went to exchange currency in 1998. He took out a sheet of paper an prepared the entire exchange calculation by hand, ultimately handing me a sum of Zim Dollars. As I got up to leave, he turned to his computer to enter the transaction using the official rate of exchange. I calculated that he supplemented (to use your word) his income by US$20.
ReplyDeleteHi Mark,
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog and have been browsing it. Fascinating stuff (found you after you left a birthday greeting for Derek Crozier ... thank you for that).
I've lived in quite a few places in the world, from the Philippines to the US. My conclusion is that the major difference between the countries at the top and bottom of the Corruption Perception Index is the number of brown envelopes passing hands at the local levels. It's a lot harder draw a distinction at the higher levels, where the big bucks change hands.