WORLD BANK REASONS WITH DAR OVER WAR ON GRAFT

 The vice, World Bank Country Director Bella Bird

THE government must throw its weight behind efforts to devise means aimed at preventing corruption, a strategy that’s critical to winning the war against the vice, World Bank Country Director Bella Bird has said.

Ms Bird was sharing experience on fighting graft with other stakeholders who attended a high-level meeting held in Dar es Salaam over the weekend jointly coordinated by the government and the Bretton Woods institution.

She said the anti-graft war was viewed as a law-enforcement issue in most countries, and it’s work reserved for the police, prosecutors and judges, admitting that the World Bank was not aware of any country that had reduced corruption without a strong resolve to punish corrupt individuals from within government and private sectors.

However, she made it clear that the World Bank knows too well that there would be precious little success if efforts to fight graft was predicated on prosecution alone.

“Corruption is prevented when laws and regulations are clear, when officials are provided guidance and training on how to do their jobs and there are active control mechanisms that ensure effective oversight and monitoring of official actions,” the World Bank envoy said.

Ms Bird said success in fighting corruption required changing of incentives for government workers. Elaborating further on this aspect, Ms Bird said fighting corruption effectively was accomplished by a package of actions that valued integrity, strengthened oversight and monitoring of the actions of officials and promptly punish deviant behaviour.

The WB country director cautioned against heavy reliance on stand-alone activities in the fight against corruption, arguing that such activities ended up only displacing the vice, not even reducing it.

Citing examples, Ms Bird said many countries spent a great deal of time and money on reducing corruption in the award of procurement contracts only to find that corruption moved to influencing how the contracts were implemented.

“Fighting corruption is often likened to stepping on a balloon. Squeezing the balloon only makes it change its shape and does not pop it,” she exemplified.

Pegging her example on the health sector, Ms Bird said reducing corruption in the sector may require greater clarity in the funding of hospitals and clinics, a more professionally managed and staffed health ministry and improved systems for reporting problems instead of making efforts to fight the vice in the sector by focusing on catching doctors who demand or accept bribes. 

The WB top official also said fighting corruption required a coalition that involved people and organisations in the government, the private sector and the civil society.

According to Ms Bird, an anti-corruption strategy that was designed exclusively by the government and involves only government actions had little chance of success. She said such coalitions should be built upon trust -- often based upon demonstrated short term actions.

She said citizens must see visible changes that would entice them to be willing to contribute their time, passion and skills to the effort.

DailyNews