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----- Original Message -----
From: "Aggo Akyea" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 6:54 PM
Subject: SMALL OR BIG BRIBERY & CORRUPTION
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>
> Third World feels staggering bite of petty corruption
>
> By Celia W. Dugger
> The New York Times
> TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005
>
>
> BANGALORE, India: Just as the painful ordeal of
> childbirth finally ended and Nesam Velankanni waited
> for a nurse to lay her squalling newborn on her chest,
> the maternity hospital's ritual of extortion began.
>
> Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse
> whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a
> bribe. If you want to see your child, families are
> told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a
> lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar
> a day. The practice is common here in the city,
> surveys confirm.
>
> Velankanni was penniless, and her mother-in-law had to
> pawn gold earrings that had been a precious marriage
> gift so she could give the money to the attendant, or
> ayah. Velankanni wept in frustration.
>
> "The ayah told my mother-in-law to pay up fast because
> the night duty doctor was leaving at 8 a.m. and wanted
> a share," she said.
>
> The grand thefts of rulers may be more infamous, but
> the bitter experience of petty corruption, less
> apparent but no less invidious, is an everyday trial
> for millions of poor people across Asia, Africa and
> Latin America. Increasingly, it is being recognized as
> a major obstacle to economic development, robbing the
> impoverished of already measly incomes and corroding
> the public services they desperately need.
>
> The bribes vary from place to place and in the
> services affected, but stretch from cradle to grave,
> according to surveys and anticorruption investigators.
> People pay to give birth, and to collect their loved
> one's bodies from mortuaries, and for things in
> between: garbage collection, clean water, medicines,
> admission to public schools. Police officers double as
> shakedown artists.
>
> Such petty bribery acts as a hidden regressive tax,
> according to the World Bank Institute, the bank's
> research arm.
>
> In Zambia, for example, poor people paid 17 percent of
> their incomes in bribes for medical care, while the
> middle class paid only 3 percent. The comparable
> figures for Paraguay were 7 percent for the poor and
> only 1 percent for the middle class.
>
> "The poor not only are paying much more of their
> incomes to get the same medical services as the middle
> and richer classes, but they are also discouraged from
> seeking basic medical care because they can't afford
> it," said Daniel Kaufmann, director of global programs
> at
> the institute.
>
> When low-level officials pick the pockets of the poor,
> it is also often a reliable indicator of greater
> corruption higher up the bureaucratic and political
> hierarchy.
>
> Here in Bangalore, a city of 6.5 million known for its
> booming high-technology industry, pleasant climate and
> good private schools, local health managers commonly
> pay bribes to senior bureaucrats or elected officials
> to get good jobs, say investigators, civic leaders and
> senior civil servants. The health professionals then
> exact payments from subordinates and patients.
>
> "Most of the district health officers have to pay
> bribes to get promotions and postings, and they in
> turn collect bribes from their staff and patients,"
> said Hanumappa Sudarshan, an official in Karnataka
> state.
>
> "It's a vicious cycle," said Sudarshan, the state's
> vigilance director for health and education.
>
> Sudarshan's boss, Nanjegowda Venkatachala, who heads
> the agency, put it bluntly: "The greed of politicians
> is ruining the country."
>
> No matter where the corruption starts, it moves down
> through the ranks and finally to the poor, for whom it
> is an inescapable burden.
>
> In the narrow lanes of the slums and working-class
> neighborhoods around the 30-bed Austin Town maternity
> hospital, families with babies and toddlers described
> their personal experiences with bribery.
>
> Shobha Rani, the doctor in charge, emphatically
> disputed such accounts in an interview earlier this
> year. "I've not come across even one patient who's
> come here and said I've been charged for anything,"
> she said. "So many times, I've spoken to patients
> without the knowledge of my staff. I say: 'Tell me the
> truth. What did you face?' They always give me a good
> report."
>
> But people who have used the hospital tell a different
> story. Nagaratna Hanumanthu, 23, and her husband,
> Hanumanthu, 28, a sugar cane juice vendor, who has a
> single name, lost their first baby to a raging fever
> just two days after he was born. Their anxieties were
> high last November when their daughter was born at
> Austin Town.
>
> The moment the baby emerged, the nurses took her away
> and demanded $7, the parents said. But Hanumanthu, a
> tall, imposing man, said he pretended he knew
> important people and threatened to complain. The
> nurses backed down, he said.
>
> But then his fears grew that the staff might hurt the
> baby. "We had already lost one child, and we were
> worried we would lose this child, too," he said.
>
> Hanumanthu, who earns about $1 a day, turned to his
> mother, who makes $11 a month sweeping floors and
> washing dishes. She gave him money for the bribe.
>
> It was far from the first bribe he had paid, he said,
> and certainly not the last.
>
> Every month, he said, he must pay off city workers who
> threaten to confiscate his pushcart. He has no choice,
> he said. How else would he make a living?
>
> Last summer, he saw what happened to a vendor who
> refused to move when the city workers told him to.
> They overturned the man's cart, cracking the engine.
> He was out of work for three months.
>
> "I try to earn a decent living," he said bitterly,
> "but because of all the demands, I'm tempted to rob
> and steal to make money fast. I'm fed up with life."
>
> A growing number of surveys of poor households are
> documenting the problems of corruption and poor public
> services, arming advocates who are fighting corruption
> with information and providing voters with data that
> helps them hold elected officials accountable.
>
> The Public Affairs Center pioneered the use of
> consumer surveys in Bangalore to measure the extent
> and effects of bribery and to give citizens a
> collective, credible voice about their experience of
> public services. The approach was the brainstorm of
> Samuel Paul, who formerly led one of India's premier
> business schools.
>
> In the last decade, the center has released report
> cards that have generated splashy coverage in local
> newspapers. "There was power in the information," Paul
> said.
>
> The idea has been widely copied. Today report cards
> are used in Ethiopia, Uganda. Zanzibar, Ukraine,
> Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam.
>
> Bangalore's success in fighting corruption has
> enhanced the appeal of report cards.
>
> The center's latest survey, done in 2003, found that
> bribery had fallen sharply since 1999 and satisfaction
> with public services had risen, although bribes
> persisted at shockingly high levels in maternity
> hospitals.
>
> Bangalore substantially reduced corruption in property
> tax assessments by setting simple rules so citizens
> could estimate their own property values, cutting out
> inspectors who had demanded payoffs. Property tax
> collections rose sharply.
>
> Cleaning up the city's 30 maternity hospitals, which
> mainly serve the poor, has proved tougher, however.
>
> A 1999 survey by the center found that 9 of 10
> families whose relatives gave birth in the hospitals
> reported paying a bribe, usually to see the baby. The
> average amount paid has since dropped to $7 from about
> $16. But 8 in 10 women still reported paying bribes in
> 2003 - to have their baby delivered, to see the child
> after birth, to get their newborn immunized.
>
> At the center's urging, the city set up boards of
> volunteers to monitor hospitals and posted charters in
> maternity hospitals stating that bribery was
> prohibited.
>
> Margaret, a 50-year-old grandmother, who uses only one
> name, said she had paid to see her 19-year-old
> daughter's baby the day he was born. She earns only
> $10 a month as a maid and said that she was determined
> to pay no more than $7 - and that she did not.
>
> "Though I felt bad and a little angry, a private
> hospital would have cost at least 2,500 rupees," or
> about $60, she said. The bribe was still costly but,
> by the calculus of poverty, a relative bargain.
>
> Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune |
> www.iht.com
>
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