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JAKARTA: Less is more in Asia as petty corruption was
found to be causing a massive drain on the region’s economic
growth and hits the poor hardest, a major UN report revealed
Thursday.
The sort of bribes many Asians
pay as a matter of course are worsening child mortality rates and
perpetuating poverty across the region, the report said.
“Petty corruption is a
misnomer,” said Anuradha Rajivan, who led the team that compiled
the UN Development Program’s report, titled Tackling Corruption,
Transforming Lives. “Dollar amounts may be relatively small but
the demands are incessant, the number of people affected and the
share of poor people’s income diverted to corruption is high.”
She said too much attention
focused on the “big fish” in anti-corruption drives and not on
the low-level vice that affects countless Asians daily.
“Hauling the rich and powerful
before the courts may grab headlines, but the poor will benefit more
from efforts to eliminate the corruption,” she said.
UNDP Assistant Secretary-General
Olav Kjorven, launching the report in Jakarta alongside Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said it was the poor who paid
the price for corruption.
“Development is ultimately
about expanding the choices that people have to lead the lives that
they value. Corruption strangles these choices especially and
disproportionately for the poor and vulnerable,” he said in a
speech.
Indonesia is one of the world’s
most corrupt countries and ranks 143rd on Transparency
International’s global corruption perceptions index, level with
Russia, Togo and Gambia.
Kjorven said the need to free
poor Asians from corruption was even more pressing in the face of
the global food crisis, with the price of rice rising as much as 70
percent in the past year.
A summary of the report said
small-scale corruption limited poor Asians’ access to education
and basic health services, contributing to high infant mortality
rates and locking people into cycles of poverty.
Across the Asia-Pacific region,
it said politicians were seen as the most venal element in society,
followed by the police and judiciary.
Nearly 20 percent of people
claimed to have paid a bribe to police in the past year in the
Asia-Pacific region, it said.
In South Asia, many people had to
pay bribes to gain admission into hospital and even for mothers to
see their newborn babies. Up to a third of drugs sold in certain
countries were expired or counterfeit.
“Ghost teachers” and even
“ghost schools” where government funds are lost on nonexistent
services were examples of corruption in the education sector which
meant fewer children in school and higher illiteracy rates.
Meanwhile, natural resources that
should provide a foundation for economic and social development were
being destroyed by illegal activity.
--AFP
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