Low salaries and corruption
Tunku Abdul Aziz<br>Vice-ChairmanPublished: Feb 22, 2001 8:51 AM | Updated: Jan 29, 2008 6:21 PM
Anti-Corruption Director-General Ahmad Zaki's well-meaning, if somewhat flawed, suggestion that there was a link between low salaries and corruption has predictably drawn sharp rebukes from Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the public, including at least two English language newspaper editors.
In all fairness, Zaki's point should be understood in the light of the absolute need for the government to pay its servants a 'living wage'. How that is determined is for the experts to work out. He should not be pilloried for highlighting one of the most important causes of unethical public service behaviour.
Our work on corruption issues in some 80 countries suggests that paying higher salaries in the expectation of creating a more ethical, socially responsible and accountable public service behaviour is an exercise in futility; it is throwing good money after bad. What needs to be done, apart from ensuring that our policemen and women, enforcement officers and other lowly-paid civil servants are able to live with a modicum of human dignity and self-respect without recourse to corruption, often out of necessity, is for us to look, much more critically at the deeper causes of corruption in our society.
Experience elsewhere clearly points to the fact that when social, political and corporate institutions are weak, for whatever reason, corruption will foist itself, in all its manifestations, on society as a whole. Institutions which have had their integrity compromised because the systems, rules and procedures that underpin their legitimacy have been subverted, cannot be expected to uphold and defend the rights of citizens for which they have been set up to do in the first place. Abuse of power is unavoidable in these circumstances. Where institutional weaknesses are identified, they have to be addressed smartly.
While the government has a duty to lead the fight against unethical and unaccountable public service behaviour by closing windows of opportunity for corruption through institutional capacity-building, it cannot, even with the best will in the world, undertake this enormous task unaided. In some countries, governments themselves are part of the problem of corruption. The solution, quite apart from political will, lies in building coalitions involving all sections of the community. The community, as has happened in Hongkong and the Nordic countries where corruption is well under control, must claim ownership, with all that this implies, in terms of assuming responsibility for success or failure in the fight against mankind's most debilitating social curse.
In summary, therefore, the government must go beyond the rhetorical. It must galvanise all stakeholders as partners in this grim fight. It must spearhead the promotion of ethical standards of public behaviour by promoting and strengthening a national integrity system. The public clearly has an important role to play. Fighting corruption is no longer the luxury of the virtuous; it is a matter of national survival.
The Kuala Lumpur Society for Transparency and Integrity, an affiliate of Transparency International, the global coalition against corruption, is ready to provide any assistance to the government in developing anti-corruption measures based on its international network and experience in this field.
In all fairness, Zaki's point should be understood in the light of the absolute need for the government to pay its servants a 'living wage'. How that is determined is for the experts to work out. He should not be pilloried for highlighting one of the most important causes of unethical public service behaviour.
Our work on corruption issues in some 80 countries suggests that paying higher salaries in the expectation of creating a more ethical, socially responsible and accountable public service behaviour is an exercise in futility; it is throwing good money after bad. What needs to be done, apart from ensuring that our policemen and women, enforcement officers and other lowly-paid civil servants are able to live with a modicum of human dignity and self-respect without recourse to corruption, often out of necessity, is for us to look, much more critically at the deeper causes of corruption in our society.
Experience elsewhere clearly points to the fact that when social, political and corporate institutions are weak, for whatever reason, corruption will foist itself, in all its manifestations, on society as a whole. Institutions which have had their integrity compromised because the systems, rules and procedures that underpin their legitimacy have been subverted, cannot be expected to uphold and defend the rights of citizens for which they have been set up to do in the first place. Abuse of power is unavoidable in these circumstances. Where institutional weaknesses are identified, they have to be addressed smartly.
While the government has a duty to lead the fight against unethical and unaccountable public service behaviour by closing windows of opportunity for corruption through institutional capacity-building, it cannot, even with the best will in the world, undertake this enormous task unaided. In some countries, governments themselves are part of the problem of corruption. The solution, quite apart from political will, lies in building coalitions involving all sections of the community. The community, as has happened in Hongkong and the Nordic countries where corruption is well under control, must claim ownership, with all that this implies, in terms of assuming responsibility for success or failure in the fight against mankind's most debilitating social curse.
In summary, therefore, the government must go beyond the rhetorical. It must galvanise all stakeholders as partners in this grim fight. It must spearhead the promotion of ethical standards of public behaviour by promoting and strengthening a national integrity system. The public clearly has an important role to play. Fighting corruption is no longer the luxury of the virtuous; it is a matter of national survival.
The Kuala Lumpur Society for Transparency and Integrity, an affiliate of Transparency International, the global coalition against corruption, is ready to provide any assistance to the government in developing anti-corruption measures based on its international network and experience in this field.
View Comments0