Poverty causes corruption and corruption causes poverty
Actually we live in world where corruption and misuse of power is relatively common, referring to standard survey data conducted by International transparency organization.
We can define Corruption in different approaches, but flowing the best-known anticorruption organization called ( TI ).
Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.
That it means public officers who have a clear duties and responsibilities to help people they enforce citizens to pay bribe.
On the other hand there is no country we know of where it is legal for public officials to accept a bribe in exchange for awarding a public contract.
And there is no country where it is legal for public health clinics to treat only voters who support a specific political party.
Corruption spreads all parts of the society but mainly there are four types of participants in the corruption activities.
1. Elected public officials (politicians )
This group are benefit from corruption when they abuse their positions be extorting bribes from business or citizens in exchange for government public services .
The major causes of corruption for this group are categorized as below
• Luck of job security: the elected politicians they don’t have sufficient time to implement all planed policies and procedures against corruption.
• To increase their private income: actually the background of the most elected politicians specially in the Africa they are lower income class of the society, and that is why subsequently taking bribes how to increase their income, and to get luxury cars, plus very big house.
While very view of them they divert some of the money for distinctly political purposes.
• Lack of governance : most of the elected politicians they don’t like to implement the main pillars of good governance like transparency, accountability and rule of law.
For example if the price of the gasoline increase today without doubt you will reduce your planed unnecessary trips because this will affect your economic issue, similarly if the accountability of the corrupt people meet punishment there is a good reason to expect less corruption.
2. Government bureaucrats (civil servants)
They benefit from corruption when they augment their salaries with from bribes that they take from citizens in exchange for delivering public services.
Civil servants and appointed public officials are, in principle nonpartisan and politically neutral, but the most problem for this area is that civil servants live off their salaries, which are often lower than those in comparable for private sector.
The major causes of civil servant corruption:
• Wrong employment : as we know every organization there is a three main components namely
Manpower
Material
Money
Recruitment and selection of the most corrupted employees are from wrong employment process, that it means when the government positions can be filled without considering of merit and qualifications the findings will be to hire corrupted people.
• There is a strong relationship between politicians and corrupted staff:
Truly speaking if the politicians are more committed to fight against corruption it will simply reduce bureaucratic corruption in simple politicians could appoint independent auditors to monitor all on going tasks.
3. Business sector : profit from lucrative government contracts won through bribery or connections.
Most of the companies they believe the maximization of their profits are directly links to how they link to government officers while the nature of profit maximization depends on your customer satisfaction .
4. Ordinary citizens : they pay bribe for day to day activities for instance the most of the ordinary citizens are often well aware that they are the victims of corruption, but they are feeling powerless to do anything about it.
While in any society there are some individuals whose moral thresholds are so high and so firm that they resist the temptation to blindly follow the norm, and who therefore resist participation in corrupt activities, whatever the risk to themselves.
In my conclusion the leadership of the country comes in different ways like authoritarian, or democratic leadership.
Most recent researchers of corruption indicates that dictatorship are often corrupt, whereas democratic leaders are less corrupt because of they are subject to elections and to re-evaluate for their performance.
There is very strong correlation between corruption and poverty, that it means poverty causes corruption and corruption causes poverty.
While on the other hand there is a clear negative relationship between corruption and the level of national prosperity.
By: khalid Ali Ahmed
Birmingham Uk
Master of public Administration and MGT
References:
1. Ray Fisman
2. Miriam A. Golden
3. International transparency organization
