Police retain top rank on E. Africa corruption index

The police department has again been ranked the most bribery-prone sector in East Africa with citizens paying an average of Sh2,888 last year to access and speed up service delivery as well as avoid problems with authorities, a new report shows.

The East African Bribery Index 2012 ranks police in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda as having the highest prevalence of officers engaging in corruption to provide services with those in Uganda getting the highest bribe of Sh3,558.

The third edition of the survey by anti-graft lobby Transparency International (Kenya) — which compared bribery tendencies in the East African Community’s key public sectors — says that the adverse ranking of the police has a negative effect on regional trade.

Overall, Uganda registered the highest national bribery index at 40.7 per cent with Burundi, which was ranked first last year, improving to fourth position with an aggregate prevalence of 18.8 per cent. Kenya was third at 29.5 per cent.

Tanzania was second at 39.1 while corruption was lowest in Rwanda at 2.5 per cent.

“As we integrate, corruption cases especially at border points of one country affect the other member countries especially in the cost of moving goods and services,” said Mwangi Kibathi, the lead research officer at TI Kenya at the launch of the report on Friday last week.

“Bribery in key sectors, therefore, need to be addressed in order to mitigate the negative impact of corruption on development projects,” says the report.

The study sees bribery as a non-tariff barrier in the region’s trade as the demand for bribes along the northern corridor is likely to have a ripple effect in the cost of doing business, especially in the landlocked states of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, which depend on Mombasa port for imports and exports.

The police, judiciary and land offices occupy the top slots in bribe-taking hence affecting the maintenance of law and order, fair determination of disputes in courts and unending conflicts over land resources.

According to the index, Kenyans forked out an average of Sh2,801 to bribe police officers last year for a myriad of reasons chiefly to hasten service delivery and that many “think it is the only way to access services”.

Even though the police have consistently topped in bribery prevalence, they only account for about a third of total bribes paid in terms of value, attributed to the likelihood that the police “extort frequent small bribes as opposed to few large ones”.

In Kenya, land and judicial officers lead the pack in terms of average size of bribe due to the premium attached to services sought at such institutions.
“The police are also more likely to interact with poor sections of the population whose expected abilities to bribe is limited in amounts,” says the survey which ranks Tanzania’s police as getting the lowest enticement in EAC of Sh2,272.

Given the central role of police — manning customs offices at border points and their presence in key offices such as tax authorities, lands offices and civil registration — corruption by the officers affects the provision of other services.

“It can be hypothesised that the police face some unique predispositions to bribery,” said TI executive director Samuel Kimeu.

“The almost absolute monopoly for legitimate state violence and powers to conduct arrest and the itinerant nature of their operations implies that a citizen does not need to seek out for their services to interact with the police,” the report reads.

The household-level study to trace bribery trends polled 9,303 respondents from all the five EAC countries picked through random sampling and was conducted between March and May.

Respondents were asked of their experiences in cases where a bribe was demanded within the last 12 months, reason for paying the kickback, the amount paid and whether the incidents were reported to anti-corruption agencies.

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