KARACHI - Judiciary has stepped up into the 4th position from 6th in the previous year in terms of corruption, while land administration department has got the first position on the list of country’s most corrupt institutions, according to the National Corruption Perception Survey 2011, released by the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) on Wednesday.
According to the report the police department has taken the second spot while the Power sector has dropped to the 5th rank from 2nd. Taxation slipped to the 3rd rank from its previous 8th position, while Customs and Tendering and Contracting departments have shown alarming increase in the corruption trend.
It is pertinent to mention here that for the first time military has been included in the survey and it was the least corrupt department after education in the year 2011. Police had topped all the previous years’ surveys but the Land Administration has crossed them and the factor of the ‘Land Mafia’ was one of the big reasons for this increase.
The annual survey report was released at Karachi Press Club in a press conference by TIP Chairman Sohail Muzaffar, along with TIP Advisory Committee chairman Syed Adil Gilani. This year’s survey has been conducted by Gallup Pakistan. Sohail Muzaffar cited the delay in punitive action by the state organs against the corrupt elements in corruption cases like Pakistan Steel, NICL, Punjab Bank, Rental Power Plants, KESC, PIA, Railway and Wapda as the main reason for the rise in corruption levels.
Sohail informed that judiciary is confronted by deliberate defiance in implementing Supreme Court orders and delay in punishing corrupt persons by the judiciary is one of the causes of lower ranking of judiciary. He said that they have released the reports to tell the government and the people that which is the most corrupt department and it should not be taken into personal context or any political intention. “We are trying to help out the government by showing them the corrupt sections in them, now it’s up to the government how it cleans them”.
On the inclusion of military in the survey, the TIP chairman said, “We have not included it in the survey, Gallup itself has added military and they have not put railways in the survey”. He said the military should not be placed before the education in the rank because according to him military is less corrupt than the education.
He added that Gallup agreed late to conduct the survey, “No one was ready to conduct the survey, the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) which conducted the previous year’s survey refused to conduct it this year. We had short time and Gallup agreed in the last”, said Muzaffar.