The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Bhutan has been ranked 27 of 176 countries, scoring 65 out of 100 by the Corruption Transparency Survey 2016 report. This is the same position as 2015.
The ACC annual report 2016 states that 149 cases are complaints against abuse of function, which is misuse of one’s official position or title ACC’s Principal Integrity Promotion officer, Kin Dorji.
The second highest is embezzlement with 45 cases, followed by 3 bribery cases. “These are most common types of corruption in the country,” according to Kin Dorji. In the others category there were 153 cases reported, which could money laundering, offence relating to witnesses, false claims and other types of corruption offences.
The maximum cases were received from Thimphu dzongkhag with 85 cases. Gasa had zero complaints.
Agency wise, the maximum number of compliants are on local government (LG) followed by autonomous bodies with 42 cases. Ministry of Foreign Affiars and legislature had zero complaints.
As per the National Corrutption Barometer Survey (NCBS) 2016, which was conducted by Bhutan Transperancy Initiative, the most prevalent form of corruption in the country is favouritism and nepotism in recruitment, promotion and transfer.
The survey also states that 63.20 percent of the respondence reported of some judges being corrupt. About 25.32 percent thought that corruption was a normal social phenomena since everyone indulged in it and there was nothing wrong with it. 24.17 percent stated that ordinary citizens cannot do anything substantial to curb corruption.
Some of the strategies by ACC to curb corruption is through education, which is long term, investigation and prevention. “Education by creating awareness and through behavorial change; investigation to take corrupt people to the task and to create affective deterrence; and prevention in a way by building corruption resistant systems, policies and procedures in agencies,” said Kin Dorji.
Abuses of grievance redress mechanisim, poor enforcement and accountability culture, apathetic culture and high societal tolerance were some of the challenges faced by ACC according to Kin Dorji.
The report will be presened to the upcoming session of the Parlaiment.
