Corruption - A Major Setback to Development

Corruption undermines deve-lopment especially in the rural areas, where people don’t only know where to complain about corrupt practices but also unaware that they are victims of corrupt practices.

By Snedia Siafwa-Shatamuka

Corruption is one of the retarding activities that have been talked about for a long time without finding a lasting solution to eradicate it.

Sensitisation has been done in urban areas using various methods such as talks and printed materials discouraging the practice.

However, not so much has been done to sensitise the rural communities about this evil act and its many forms.

A recent national government baseline survey report, aimed at assisting government in designing a comprehensive governance and anti-corruption strategy, has observed that corruption in Zambia takes many forms and is common, especially in the areas of public service delivery. But still one may ask what corruption is and what form it takes?

Undermines the majority

Besinati Mpepo, one of the participants at the MS-Zambia 2005 Annual Meeting, who is the co-ordinator for Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR), defines corruption as selfishness by a few people who are privileged which ends up undermining the majority.

She notes that corruption takes many forms, the key ones being petty corruption such as bribing of officials at road blocks, payments for services and grand corruption which includes such acts as subverting government funds destined for development Other forms include: political corruption, which involves corrupting the elctorate and institutional corruption which involves promotion of people through status rather than through merit.

Great challenges in rural areas

However, Mpepo observed that corruption in public service delivery poses the greatest challenge in rural areas.

She noted that funds have been sourced in the past purported for development in rural areas yet nothing has been done at the proposed sites of development. Usually no follow-ups are being made, as these communities are not aware that such activities were supposed to take place in their areas.

She adds that the biggest problem has been fear to report such activities. The people in the rural areas do not have the proper communication channels.

Furthermore, these people do not see the relevance of fighting corruption despite it subjecting the majority of Zambians to poverty.

The poor are robbed

An example which was highlighted by one of the participants at the Annual Meeting, where a police officer makes a deliberate roadblock and collects K10, 000 from unsuspecting villagers riding bicycles every time they pass at the check point.

This has been going on for a long time without any of them reporting, as the person they are supposed to report to is the same culprit hence these poor villagers are robbed of the little they have.

This poses a greater challenge both to the government and NGOs to work towards sensitising and educating the rural communites so that they can come up with workable programmes that will help them fight corruption or report any act of corrupt practices.

Poor governance system

Poor governance system is another problem in addressing corruption.

Besinati Mpepo added that governance is not just a concern for governments but for the whole country.

It affects all the people. For instance, good governance uses national resources for poverty reduction and social protection while bad governance uses national resources for the benefit of the powerful. Cases of corruption are detected and prosecuted in good governance while rampant corruption infests all business and government activities in bad governance, a practice that diverts concentration from poverty reduction activities to enriching the powerful.

Since lack of sensitisation has been the major set back, Mpepo implores MS-Zambia with its partners, who are directly involved with the community, to provide mechanisms that will help them fight corruption.

She adds that appropriate strategies that work to promote public education and awareness in the fight against corruption need to be developed.

Taskforce in rural area

Elias Siame of Kawambwa District Forestry Officer says that task forces are needed in rural areas to sensitise the communities and come up with workable programmes to fight corruption.

Therefore, there is need for MS-Zambia to put the fight against corruption as one of the components its partners should embrace, because with corrupt practices prevalent among the community, it is difficult to achieve meaningful development.

As the government survey report recommends, it is important to implement a series of institutional reforms in areas of transparency and accountability of public agencies and other organisations.

However, one awaits the implementation of such pronounced “good” strategies in the fight against corruption. Meanwhile, the fight goes on.